Yankee Knights
by The Projective Otaku
Summary: Sidonia stumbles upon a garde, a garde that isn't from Sidonia. The pilot is badly beaten and bruised, but he just might bring the promise of humanities survival...
1. One in Billion Chance

Yankee Knights

Chapter 1

0.0000001% Chance

Vice Commander Yuhata Midorikawa stormed onto the bridge. She had been planning this night for months, getting Tanikaze alone for dinner. Then the Gauna attacked. They had just been sitting down when their wrist watches started beeping at them incessantly. Of course, Tanikaze had been put on alert and would be deployed. He was already sitting in the ready room, not a hundred yards from the Tsugumori. The bridge crew wisely averted their collective masked gaze from the fuming Vice Commander and busied themselves with their assorted instruments and controls.

"Report!" She barked as she mounted the Vice Commander's station next to the currently unoccupied Captain's station.

"Forty-five Gauna inbound zero-three-six on plane from Sidonia's base course." Replied the tactical officer. Yuhata bowed her head in thought. She pushed her frustration at the Gauna attack out of her mind and focused on her job. The release in tension was palpable on the bridge as the Vice Commander calmed down. She looked up a few minutes later, cool and collected.

"Deploy two divisions of sixteen gardes each. Give Samari the first division, and give Tanikaze the second." Yuhata looked down at her plot. "How long until intercept?"

"If we launch now the strike force will intercept the Gauna in four-nine minutes six-zero-eight-four kilometers short of Sidonia." Replied the tactical officer.

"Make it forty-five."

Tanikaze nervously gripped the controls to the Tsugumori. He had been sitting ready in the launch tube for nearly ten minutes before he got the go order. The nervous fluttering in his chest disappeared as he pushed the acceleration and a full eight gees pushed him back against his flight chair. He rocketed out of the tube alongside seven other gardes, and three more sections of eight followed. His breathing began to normalize as the inertial compensator came up to full strength and the g-forces relented. Sixteen gardes. This was his biggest command yet, and he was determined to make good of it. After everyone had checked in his division joined with Samari's in a thirty-two palm formation.

Vice Commander Midorikawa watched as the gardes joined up and sped off to meet the threat. Her frustration at the situation reared itself again, but she forced it down. Humanity couldn't afford for her mind to be clouded. After about fifteen minutes of watching the small ring of gardes march across the main display, the elevated Captain's station came down. The captain, standing in perfect stillness atop the platform looked steadily around the bridge as it came to a halt a meter above Yuhata's Vice Commander's Station.

"Midorikawa, what's the situation?" the Captain asked.

"Ma'am, we have forty-five Gauna inbound from the north-east of Sidonia's base course. I have sent thirty two gardes out to meet the threat, they are twenty eight minutes from turnover." Yuhata replied.

"Who's in command?"

"Samari, with Tanikaze as her second."

The Captain nodded her head a little bit at that. She went back to emanating that feline grace that always made the nerdy Yuhata jealous. Meanwhile the gardes continued to crawl across the main display. The bridge was silent except for the clicking and clacking of the bridge crew for about thirteen more minutes.

"Uhhh… Sidonia, this is Unit 005, we're picking up some strange RADAR feedback directly in front of us." Yuhata brought the RADAR returns up on her personal display and frowned.

"Rodger that Samari, we have them too." Yuhata's forehead creased as she continued to frown at the returns. It wasn't that they were _getting_ a lot of RADAR returns, it was that the ones they were getting were scattered, and as the data began to refine from the gardes' RADAR, a single contact was established in front of the formation, but it was small, only about the size of a human being, maybe a little smaller. Yuhata continued to frown at the small dot on her screen.

Tanikaze was getting the returns too, and they worried him. The Gauna had been getting more and more clever and a small RADAR return might as well be an enemy contact. He aligned his MAC at the contact, but something held him back from shooting. He couldn't explain it later, but in that instant it made perfect sense not to shoot, and a split second later he got a good look at the contact.

Yuhata was getting worried as the contact got closer to the formation. An asteroid wouldn't scatter their returns like that. Did the Gauna find out a way to beat their sensors? Yuhata shivered at the thought.

"Sidonia, this is Tanikaze, I can see the contact."

"What is it?"

"It looks like a garde, I repeat, it looks like a black gschschschsch…" The static filled Yuhata's ears like thunder. She stared open mouthed at the main display, now just a field of static. Most would call her infatuation with Tanikaze a simple school girl crush, but the love was very real… for her at least. That infatuation now turned on her, strangling her, tightening her chest and shaking her knees. Even the Captain was silent, outwardly looking calm and collected. After a few seconds of shocking pain, a small beep started sounding throughout the sudden silence the filled the bridge. Yuhata shoved her pain deep and looked up.

"What the hell is that?" she asked in a perfectly conversational tone, making it seem all the more psychotic. The communications officer gulped before answering.

"We are getting a low-band radio signal ma'am. I've never seen it actually used." She said, hurrying to look as busy as possible in order to avoid the Vice Commander's wrath. She typed for a few seconds on her keyboard then gestured to the main display, where a voice analyzer came up.

"…day, mayday, this is Echo-Yankee-Kilo-Niner-One-Seven, Gauna have entered detection envelope and I am moving to engage, any Fleet assets in system, I need support. Mayday, mayday…" The message repeated itself several times and Yuhata's jaw dropped as it played. She didn't recognize the language at all, no one should. In fact the word language had almost fallen out of use because no one had herd any language other than Sidonian in over five hundred years, since the Aposimz had sent its last message. The Aposimz had been Australian and had sent its message in English, but Yuhata had only ever seen the message in its translated form, but the Captain had been around when English was still part of the Academy curriculum, before the Aposimz' message. Underneath her mask the Captain began to sweat. The implications of contact with a new human being would be revolutionary, another seed ship would double Sidonia's defensive capabilities… and facilitate the Captains 'Into the Breach' course. The Captain suddenly realized that the entire bridge crew was looking at her.

"Get those Gardes back online, I want them to form up on that black garde, designation EYK-917." She said, her voice cool even though her insides were twisting at what was to come.

"Captain, what's going on?" She looked down to see Yuhata staring up at her. Her face had become lined with barely suppressed fear and pain caused by confusion.

"Electronic Warfare." The Captain replied. Yuhata tended to be obsessive, bossy, and emotional; but the Captain had to admit, she was smarter than anyone else on the ship. That brain now went to work on her words and her fear and pain turned to wonder. Sidonia had not routinely mounted EW pods on their gardes in more than seven hundred years, and the gauna emitted no electromagnetic signature, which left only one option left. Her smile widened as she gave orders to activate Sidonia's own countermeasure to burn through to their gardes. The Captain reached down and activated her command override for the communications systems.

"This is the Imperial Japanese Seed Ship Sidonia to unknown unit Echo-Yankee-Kilo-Niner-One-Seven: Identify yourself." A few seconds passed before a response came in,

"Rodger that Sidonia, this is Lieutenant James Stuart of the United States Ship Essex; Charlie-Victor-Victor-Alpha-Niner-Zero-Zero, I require assistance. Gauna have entered my detection envelope and I have made a crash carbon thaw." The Captain was silent a few moments before answering.

"We'll be waiting for you." She said before closing the circuit. "Yuhata, send a medical team to the garde hanger and have a nano-surgery capsule prepared." Yuhata's eyes widened. There were only three NSCs on the ship and the nano-fluid used was notoriously hard to manufacture, they were only used in case someone deemed essential was in danger of imminent death. The other reason was because the Captain had been speaking in the other language.

"Yes, ma'am." She said after only the slightest hesitation. The Captain nodded before turning back to the hectic confusion of the battle as Sidonia's sensors came back online.

Tanikaze sighed in relief and thanks as the Tsugumori came back online. He would have been extremely surprised by the EMP if the Mk. 17 simulator hadn't included garde-on-garde scenarios, and thanks to the limited number of automated systems on the Toha Juukou Mk. 17 'Tsugumori', he was able to reactivate the analog and hydraulic systems after a total system reboot. The heavily automated Kunato Developments Mk. 18s that his fellow garde pilots had been flying would probably major refit before they could fly again. The first system he used was the comms.

"Sidonia, this is Tanikaze, our formation has been impacted by an electro-magnetic pulse. The Tsugumori is fine, but the eighteens will need a ride home."

"Rodger that Tanikaze, recovery teams have already been deployed. Your new mission objectives are to tail and capture the unknown garde unit, designation EYK-917 piloted by one… Suchuāto Jēmuzo." Tanikaze was surprised to hear the Captain come over the comms instead of Yuhata, which meant that the situation was pretty dire. So surprised that he missed the pilot's odd name and the hesitation the Captain had when she translated it.

"Yes, ma'am." He said before rocketing off in the direction he had seen the garde go. He had no idea how he was going to subdue the other garde, much less catch up to it. It had overtaken a thirty-two garde clasp formation from a relative dead stop in only a few seconds, simultaneously keeping the pilot from being turned to mush and popping off an EMP strong enough to fry at least thirty-one garde units. That spoke of an untold amount of power and durability on such a small platform. Tanikaze shook the thoughts from his head and pressed on.

Before long he began to pass through massive clouds of expanding placenta. The reduced visibility from the clouds and a lack of RADAR returns gave to an incredibly creepy atmosphere. Eventually Tanikaze started getting the scattered RADAR returns that had originally announced the arrival of EYK-917. It took him three hits to triangulate the position and actually home in on the near-invisible matte-black mech. Tanikaze's jaw dropped as it came into view. The first thought that struck him was that it was incredibly angular, with no rounded corners or edges. The second thought was that it was bristling with weapons. In its right hand it held a spear nearly as tall as it was, but it wasn't a Kabizashi. The head was of a silver substance that glittered in the starlight and was far more securely attached to the shaft than a kabi. It had two large cannon looking weapons, one on its right forearm and one protruding from the top of its back unit, and three smaller rotary guns sticking out from exposed weapons bays on the back unit. The third thought was that it looked like suissuno cheese, covered in craters and holes from combat and micro-meteor impacts.

As he grabbed on to its forearms he saw inside the cockpit, which still had a transparent canopy like the Tsugumori. The pilot wore a uniform remarkably similar to his, except that it was black instead of white. He was also strapped into his seat by a complex series of straps and belts Tanikaze could only assume was incredibly uncomfortable. His arms, the only part of him appaerently not strapped in, floated in front of him, which meant that he was unconscious and that his internal gravity had given out. He shook his head, dragging the disabled super-garde back to the Sidonia at a leisurely 3g.

* * *

Nagate burst from the cockpit like a coiled spring as it opened back on Sidonia, which surprised Sasaki, who was standing on the recovery pad that he landed on.

"Hey!" She said as she stumbled back. She came up quickly and threw a punch, only to be thrown off balance again as her fist passed through empty air, Nagate already leaping across the ten-foot chasm between the platform and the walkway, heading toward the garde bay he had manhandled the non-Sidonian mech into. Tanba simply grunted, he had enough problems to worry about with thirty-two fried gardes without adding angsty teenage pilots to the list.

Nagate ran the two hundred meters or so that separated his bay with the one he had put Suchuāto into. On the way he passed several pissed off pilots with wounded pride over being towed back without killing a single gauna or withstanding any credible damage. He seemed to be the last one there in any case, as everyone else had been able to dock while he had to dock Suchuāto and then dock himself. The Captain and Yuhata were there, along with Samari, Seii, Isana, and an expanding crowd of curious and/or angry garde pilots. Two mechanics where on their hands and knees on top of the cockpit when he got there.

They seemed to be discussing something, before one of them shrugged and brought a hammer down on the central transparent panel. The entire machine powered up again, weapons whiring and engines whining in a standby faze. A reverberating female voice filled the hangar,

"Unauthorized attempt at entry, detected: Identify" It said in a language Nagate didn't understand. The Captain stepped to the front,

"Captain Kobayashi, IJSS Sidonia." The machine seemed to glow brighter for half a moment before a massive sound shook everything. At least he assumed it was a sound, he didn't actually hear it, just the slow rumble and the sound from the ship responding. The machine glowed again as it stopped a few moments later.

"Reverberal Scan: Complete, Detect a Nineteen percent change in structure from files, updating; Cyber Scan: Complete, downloading files" A few moments of silence before it spoke again, this time in Sidonian. "Identity confirmed: Captain Kobayashi of the Imperial Japanese Seed Ship Sidonia; Initiating AI Release." As the machine said it a blue light seemed to project from the front and the holographic image of a woman appeared in front of the Captain. She was young, mid-twenties, and wearing a flight suit similar to that he had seen Suchuāto wear. Nagate, being a teenage boy, couldn't help but notice a generous bust and hips.

"Captain," she said, bowing shallowly, "my name is Leah, my pilot is injured and need immediate medical assistance, would you be willing to provide that?"

"Of course, I already have a medical team here." She gestured to a trio of police medics, two carrying a stretcher and another carrying some form of monitoring equipment, on the platform next to the cockpit.

"Very well, thank you." Leah said, disappearing, as the cockpit behind her opened and depressurized, creating a hissing sound of escaping air. The intricate web of belts and straps Nagate had seen had undone themselves and retracted into their various housings, so all the medics had to do was gently pick him up and place him on the stretcher. As the platform came down to the walkway, the medics hurried off in the direction of the med bay. He moved to go after them, but the Captain stopped him,

"You can go see him later, Nagate. He went through a crash carbon thaw, and frankly I'm surprised he was conscious as long as he was. Until he recovers, it won't be a pretty sight." He grimaced and nodded. Although he was generally a complete imbecile when it came to social interaction, even he understood that as the Captains way of saying 'back the fuck off'. He shook his head before heading off to the locker room.


	2. Report

Yankee Knights

Chapter 2

Report

* * *

Author's Note: Ok, so I thought long and hard about this chapter, rewriting several times in several different situations. I decided to trash all that and instead wrote a history of James' home fleet. It is laid out as an automatic download to Sidonia's computers by the AI Leia. It's a little long and dry, but bear with me, I'll get back to the real storyline soon. I also had his in a cool computer font, but that doesn't translate to this site, sorry.

* * *

INITIALIZING...

BEGIN MAINFRAME HOOKUP...

LOADING...

MAINFRAME COMMUNICATION WITH SIDONIA: SUCCESFUL...

BEGIN DOCUMENT TRANSMISSION (REPORT_TO_ )...

What follows is a report to the Imperial Japanese Seed Ship Sidonia by Garde Unit EYK-917 *AI Code: Lima-Echo-India-Alpha* as per regulation (95) part (6) paragraph (a) *Encounter with Non-Fleet Ship – Human*.

In the year 2171 A.D., the Gauna were discovered by a NASA picket ship beyond Pluto's orbit in deep space. The President of the United States, in response to the possibly hostile species, began a rapid development of the spaceborne navy first envisioned several decades earlier. This included massive naval bases on the minor planets Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas. Large shipyards were built around these asteroid bases and a fleet was gradually built.

This first, pre-diaspora Fleet, was built to sustain operations anywhere in the Sol System without constant access to Earth. The Liberty-II modular auxiliary ships could be implemented in a number of different ways, from farm ships to troop transport to machine shops. This fleet consisted of two battleships (BB), built around their spinal Mass Accelerator Cannon (MAC) and two carriers (CV), built around their airwings of pre-garde smallcraft as well as assorted cruisers (CA/CL), destroyers (DD) and frigates (FF). Over the next two hundred years these ships were built and stockpiled, eventually reaching 218 combat vessels, 316 Liberty-II auxiliary ships, and a number of specialized mobile manufactories.

In 2371 A.D., the Gauna mass union ship, that had been holding position in the outer reaches of the Sol System, moved in-system and attacked Earth, physically destroying the planet itself. The only other spaceborne military force, the People's Liberation Army Air Force, with a more Terran-centric deployment pattern than the US Navy, attempted to intercept the Gauna en-route to Earth along with the US 2nd Fleet based around the carrier USS Marcus Rodriguez, named after the President who had instituted the Fleet buildup two hundred years before. There were no survivors.

The remaining ships of the US Fleet moved to defend the remnants of the planet, although the Gauna made no attempt to push the attack, in fact pulling out of the system as quickly and mysteriously as they had come. Thus began the Seed Ship Project, with many nations building the massive ships from the remains of the planet in preparation for an exodus from the Sol System. The Britons on the Queen Victoria, the French on the Charlemagne, the Germans on the Bismarck, the Italians on the Caesar, the Greeks on the Leonidas, the Israelis on the Abraham, the Poles on the Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and the Scandinavians on the Asgard all agreed to subordinate themselves to the US Chief of Naval Operation, one Fleet Admiral Steven Hopper, in order to gain the protection of the US Navy along with the United States Seed Ship (USSS) Manifest Destiny. Other nations, such as Sidonia's sponsor Japan, thought that survival chances would increase should the seed ships flee independently of each other

In 2382 A.D. the aging Admiral Hopper, whom had emergency governmental powers during the crises, gave the order for The Fleet to leave the Sol System for good. As we left the outer orbit of Pluto, we towed the shipyards built from Pallas, Vesta, and Ceres with us. Those Liberty ships that had been built for troop transport were filled to capacity with civilians that could not make it onto a Seed Ship.

One hundred and ninety three years later, in 2575, when The Fleet reached the Alpha Centauri Binary System, we had already changed drastically. Unlike Sidonia, which retained a quasi-military emergency government, The Fleet returned to civilian rule in 2390, upon the retirement of Admiral Hopper. The government was based on the old American constitution, with the nine massive seed ships forming 'states', providing two senators and a population-based number of representatives to a congress aboard the USSS Manifest Destiny.

Also unlike Sidonia, which became mostly atheistic, The Fleet became deeply involved with religion. Pope Saint Peter II, a relatively young, charismatic cardinal at the onset of the Diaspora, was elected pontiff following the death of Pope Valentine II during the attack. Saint Peter took up residence aboard the USSS Caesar and from there spent his 48-year reign attempting to solidify Christianity under the papal banner. He largely succeeded, with most surviving denominations broken by the shattering of the world, he won the conversions of both individuals and entire congregations.

The two primary resistors to this were the Muslim and Jewish survivors. While the Jews, who had a majority aboard one of the seed ships, the USSS Abraham, were unworried by the growing Christian power on the other ships, the adherents of Islam, who had substantial minorities aboard several seed ships, became agitated and increasingly disenfranchised by both the Christian and Jewish majorities. This culminated in a series of terrorist attacks aboard the seed ships Abraham and Manifest Destiny in 2402 that claimed several thousand lives and caused minor damage to both ships. Muslim communities were stripped of their rights after this, with US Marines occupying their shipboard areas and their representation in government ignored or outright removed.

In 2417 several incidents between Muslims and the occupying troops led to a full blown rebellion, with several now-aging Liberty ships being used as bases for the attacks on the seed ships. In the first few weeks of the rebellion, massive numbers of Muslims fled their home ships and migrated to the USSS Abraham, which had the recovered Temple Mount from old Jerusalem. Despite protest from the aging Pope Peter II, many of these migrating ships were jumped upon and destroyed in transit by the fighter wings of the USS Washington, the last remaining carrier. When the massive influx of Muslims began to overwhelm the life support systems aboard Abraham, the incumbent population was moved to other ships, living as refugees, and the only ones left aboard the ship were US Marines and the rebelling Muslims. When it became apparent that the rebels would take the bridge, the battleships USS Texas and California fired Ion and Electro-magnetic weapons as the seed ship, disabling the sensitive control systems and forcing the emergency systems on the ship, controlled by a primitive AI called Palmer, to kick in. Palmer proved extremely redundant to hacking and neither side could regain control of the ship's systems for the remainder of the war.

In 2419 Pope Peter II died and was succeeded by a zealot known as Julius IV. Pope Julius made an offer to the remaining rebels aboard the USSS Abraham, convert or die. After two years of vicious fighting and thousands of dead in the flickering red lamps of the stricken seed ship, several came forward. Only three made it to US lines, the rest were publicly beheaded for apostasy by their extremist brothers. The video was sent to every smart device in the Fleet. This incident infuriated not only Pope Julius IV but also President John Macgregor, who ordered the annihilation of the remaining rebels.

In 2422, the war ended with the storming of the last rebel stronghold in the bowels of the Abraham. The Muslim population had been reduced by ninety six percent, due to atrocities committed by both side. It took another three years for the Ceres shipyard to complete repairs to the heavily damaged vessel, and another year for the displaced population to be returned. The rest of the leg to Alpha Centauri was passed in relative peace. There was no major research advances during this time.

In 2575 Fleet scout frigates passed Mary's Picket, a massive gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A at the outer reaches of the system. There was Lunar-Class Gauna Mass Union Ship (MUS-L) orbiting the third planet of the system and the combat elements of the Fleet moved in to engage. The aged ships were greatly outmatched, but it was discovered that while kinetic weapons were ineffective against the true bodies and that energy weapons were ineffective against placenta, the reverse was true. The battleships' and heavy cruisers main guns stripped massive amounts of the versatile placenta from the MUS's exterior before bombarding the true body cluster at its center with laser, ionized gas, and plasma weapons that burned through the nearly impervious core structure. During the cleanup of individual Gauna that had escaped the destruction the strike craft wings took massive casualties; the problem being that the versatile Gauna completely outperformed the linear fighters descended from old Earth's air forces. A solution was found in the maintenance mechs used for extra-vehicular repairs aboard larger vessels, cousins of the smaller heavy infantry units used by the Marines. The first ordered combat mech, the M1 Firebreach, is the forbearer of both modern naval interceptor gardes and marine attack gardes.

Despite the overall success of the Battle for Alpha Centauri, the Fleet took massive casualties, over fifteen thousand dead and wounded along with the cruisers USS Overlord, USS Derna, and USS Desert Storm and several destroyers and frigates completely destroyed; disintegrated when their Heigus reservoirs were breached.

After the hard-won victory, the Fleet settled into a monumental building program. The massive asteroids the Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas shipyards had been built around had already been mined to oblivion, the very rock broken down to its molecular components and used to repair the existing ships, so the asteroid belt and rocky planets of the Alpha Centauri system were set upon by newly constructed mining vessels, hewing the rocky clusters surrounding the binary stars from existence.

The largest asteroids were reserved to act as the bases of three new seed ships. The USSS Centaur and the USSS Vengeance were standard sized seed ships, massing similar to the Manifest Destiny or the Queen Victoria, slightly larger than Sidonia. The third new seed ship, the USSS Terra, massed nearly three times as much as the largest seed ship created in the Sol System, mainly the twin ships PLSS Han and Qin, built from the split halves of the dwarf planet Haumea, capable of supporting more than a million denizens. The USSS Terra became the new capital of the Fleet housing both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.

The combat fleet was also greatly expanded, increasing from the original three surviving capital ships to thirty one, sixteen battle ships organized into four flotillas of four each and twelve carriers organized into three flotillas of four each. These new battleships were slightly larger, with longer MACs and a small strike wing compliment, mostly Marine heavy attack gardes, designed to withstand and project as much firepower as possible. The new carriers had a single, central hanger that drastically increased hanger space and decreased strike craft deployment time; although heavily mixed their air wings mostly consisted of the lighter naval interceptor gardes, designed for speed and maneuverability. The original Washington, Texas, and California were grouped into a special honor guard squadron, tasked with the protection of the USSS Terra, just as they had been tasked with the protection of the original Terra.

The sub-capital combat arm saw even greater expansion. Heavy cruisers were built to mimic the implacable qualities of the battleship. The only sub-capital ships equipped with garde wings, they were designed as a well-rounded deployer, acting as the cornerstones of small expeditions to bypassed systems for resource and sample collection, even defeating small mass union ships on their own, although testing this was ill-advised. The light cruisers became massive weapons platforms, bristling with smaller weapons capable of shredding individual Gauna or hostile smallcraft. Destroyers became mainstays of the fleet, acting as the primary Fleet response to crises. Big enough to handle itself in most cases, but with the eyes, ears and legs to retreat if out-classed. Frigates, the smallest vessel commanded by a senior officer, were designed as the eyes and ears of a fleet. Quick on their feet, they were built as versatile elements of any task force, from small craft defense to scouting to raiding.

The civilian fleet saw great improvement as well. Dedicated research ships were built, each in turn dedicated to a special area of research: medicine, weapons, propulsion, agriculture, etc. A total of twelve of these ships were built. Dedicated ships for farming, production, mining, and other uses were also built. The shipyards also saw a slight expansion, mostly in becoming self-propelled, although max acceleration on Ceres, the largest shipyard, was only one standard gravity, far below a battleship's twelve or even the Leonidas' (the slowest seed ship) four. Engines were also attached to the largest asteroids left intact by the buildup, providing a large mobile resource supply. The most exotic fruits of the buildup were the three water reservoir ships. Slightly larger than a cruiser but smaller than a battleship, two of these ships were filled with vast amounts of saltwater in large tanks extending throughout the ships, and the third with tiered layer of fresh water. These were filled with the fruits of Earth's seas, cloned from the saved genetics of originals that had been unable to survive in the smaller tanks aboard the seed ships. The surfaces of the tanks these ships also became exotic resorts, some reserved for military personnel and others for those that could afford it, as a free-market economy had been developed since Sol was abandoned.

In 2606 A.D., thirty one years after the first human ship had entered the Alpha Centauri Binary System, the last human ship passed the orbit of Mary's Picket. Bolstered by their newfound muscle and knowledge, the Fleet set a course into the first Gauna's vector toward Sol. That was two hundred and thirteen years ago. In 2694, the dedicated research vessels paid off, discovering a method of faster-than-light travel based on artificial wormholes that act more as compressors of time and space more than expanders of speed or velocity, thus allowing the massive apparent acceleration without the requirement for massive inertial compensators. What Sidonia calls Kabi were also discovered by studying the incompletely dissolved remains of Gauna captured in the Battle for Alpha Centauri and artificially reverse-engineered. The materiel is now commonplace in garde lances and kinetic rounds aboard all size ships and weapons larger than small arms.

Between 2606 and now, 2819, the Fleet has been attacked twice. First at the Battle of Hermes where the Fleet encountered a lone Gauna mass union ship, smaller than the one met at Alpha Centauri, amongst the comets of the Hermes Ice Cluster. Second at the Battle of the Rift, where the Fleet was ambushed and engaged by three mass union ships. They were hidden by the general Heigus signature given off by the cloud of ionized gases known as the Rift where the fleet had stopped as a rare opportunity to collect essential gases such as hydrogen and oxygen. The Fleet won both of these engagements, eliminating the Gauna while protecting the seed ships. These were won at a cost, but while broken hulks could be recovered and repaired or salvaged, the human lives lost were irreplaceable. After the casualties of the Battle for the Rift, the Fleet Congress began overseeing the cataloguing of every citizen's genetic material over the objection of the Church.

This unit was disabled in a skirmish with a lone Gauna over an icy asteroid approximately four hundred and ninety eight days ago. Upon critical damage to the Heigus reservoir aboard accompanying the incapacitation of the pilot, this unit automatically shut down, placing the pilot in carbon-based hibernation as per protocol, although because of damage to the comms systems aboard, this unit was unable to contact its ship of origin, the USS Essex, and be recovered. Although long range comms were beyond this unit's ability to repair independently, short range comms became active two hundred and eighteen days ago. The Heigus reservoir became fully operational one hundred and forty seven days ago. This unit was working on repairing the Heigus particle suppression field generator when this unit identified a Gauna within its detection envelope. Due to a corresponding presence of a seed ship in the combat area, Standing Order 1 was activated: protect the seed ships at all costs. This overrode this unit's standing orders to remain deactivated until recovery.

{It should also be noted that this unit's AI program is *DATA CORRUPTED* days beyond scheduled memory wipe and should be *DATA CORRUPTED* and *DATA CORRUPTED* as per regulation *DATA CORRUPTED*}


	3. A New Pilot

Yankee Knights

Chapter 3

A New Pilot

"Yure, what's his condition?" The Captain asked the immortal doctor, standing outside the newcomer's room in the Military Clinic. It had been three days since the battle and only a few hours since the boy had been pulled from the nano-surgery capsule. Kobayashi had tried to think of the pilot otherwise but had been unable to. The boy in the room next to her looked even younger than Nagate or Izana or Yuhata, having the scrawny, unfinished look of someone in his mid-to-late-teens.

"Physically?" Yure Shinatose asked in return, "He's fine, but his mental state is unstable at best." She held a datapad as they both looked in on the other room through a large one-way mirror.

"How so?" Kobayashi continued.

"He doesn't want to wake up." Shinatose said simply. "We were able to get him for a few moments right after we got him out of the NSC, but he simply lacks the will and interest to stay awake, or even eat, and I can tell you right now that he hasn't been spliced to allow photosynthesis, his cellular makeup is all wrong. He does have what appear to be some mechanical implants, but as of right now, I can't ascertain what they might do."

"Is there any way we can force him to wake up?"

"Yes, but I wouldn't recommend any of them, they'll just make everything worse."

"We need him to wake up, Yure." Kobayashi stated, turning to her companion, her mask removed.

"Don't worry Kobayashi, he is in perfect physical health, he will have to wake up sometime." Yure said, not looking up from the report on her datapad. The Captain turned back to the window for several moments before speaking again.

"Have you read the combat report?" She finally asked the doctor.

"No, I haven't, and even if I did, I'm a scientist and a doctor, not a pilot or a tactician, I doubt I'd see anything helpful." She said, finally looking up from her datapad, resigned to the conversation.

"You should, and while you're at it, you should read the report that his garde downloaded to my console."

"What do you mean his garde?" Yure Shinatose asked after a moment

"His garde has an artificial intelligence, it even asked to provide medical assistance when I went to the hanger." She paused to let the significance of a computer taking initiative sink in, "And the report it downloaded is even more fantastic. Twelve seed ships, _twelve!_ One of them is about five times as large as Sidonia. They also have more than thirty warships more than half the size of Sidonia and dozens or even hundreds of smaller vessels. This is the boost we need, Yure, and that kid is the link to it." Kobayashi finished, gesturing toward the new pilot. The scientist Yure stood quiet for several moments before speaking.

"Well, he's not in a coma, so when he gets really hungry he'll wake up."

"...very well." The Captain left it hanging for a long moment before turning to leave.

Samari paced nervously in the massive antechamber to the Captain's quarters. The pure, unblemished white walls gave the high-ceilinged room an unnatural brightness and she squinted against it. The Captain had summoned the young pilot somewhat suddenly for reasons unknown. Young. Samari snorted at the term. She was indeed young, biologically at least, barely out of the Academy; but she had a combat record twice as long as anyone else's. She had lost some good friends in the last few months since this newest of Gauna wars. Her pace slowed and she finally came to a stop, remembering faces long forgotten.

She shook her head. She couldn't start remembering now, if she did she wouldn't be of any use to anyone. Her Captain had summoned her and she needed to be ready for anything. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of the thoughts haunting her.

"Pilot?" She didn't know how long she had been sitting there in silence when the Captain's aid called her in, startling her, "The Captain is waiting, right this way." He said, gesturing to the doorway.

Samari stumbled over her words for a moment before simply nodding resolutely. The Captain's aide held the door open for her as she entered past him before closing it behind her, leaving her alone with the captain. The Captain's quarters were as massive as the antechamber, and just as white and unadorned, the only decorations being three massive ovular screens with the starscape beyond the ship's hull projected onto them. No furniture or discernable object were their either.

As the Captain turned around Samari came to attention and gave her a stiff salute, holding it. The Captain chuckled slightly at it and raised her ever present cane to the forehead of her mask in a casual response. Regardless, Samari didn't lower her salute until the cane touched the floor again, and even then she stayed at attention. The Captain paused in front of her before circling her, saying nothing, her shoes and cane alternately tapping, echoing in the cavernous room. She finished circling Samari and stood in front of her, looking her up and down through the oddly cat-like mask she always wore in the presence of the crew. A lone bead of sweat ran down Samari's temple in the silence.

"Every inch the soldier, and every inch the woman." The Captain said, almost under her breath.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Samari asked in confusion, her eyes never wavering from their forward stare.

"Nothing, Ittan, nothing at all." The Captain replied, equally distantly, before turning and walking back to the central starscape, standing there for several moments before speaking. "You're a member of the terran movie club, correct?"

Samari's cheeks flared as she struggled to stay at attention. How had the Captain known?! She had been so careful! Of course the Captain would have access to the digital library account records, where anyone with two eyes and access could see she checked out several old terran movies a week, but why did the Captain care? It would be social suicide if it got out that she was in the terran movie club, a club supposedly only filled with geeks, old men, and unwanteds.

"Y-yes ma'am." Samari quietly replied only after the slightest hesitation.

"And what movies do you usually view? I hear everyone in the club has a favorite genre and time period." The Captain continued, still looking out over the starscape.

"Aye, ma'am, I-uh, I usually watch war movies, ma'am, uh, late twentieth and early twenty first century, ma'am." The nervousness in Samari's voice was evident as she stood there, staring at the Captain's back.

"Perfect..." The Captain said quietly, almost imperceptibly, before turning around to face the pilot, "You're aware of our new... guest aboard Sidonia I'm sure?"

"Yes ma'am, I was in the squadron he fried." She said, slightly sourly, remembering the humiliation of having to be towed back to the ship and trying to keep it out of her voice.

"Well, I have a new mission for you."

"Ma'am?" Samari asked, surprised by the radical new direction of the conversation.

"I'm assigning you to be with him." The Captain said, somewhat flatly.

"C-could you explain that ma'am?" Samari asked, confused and angry, mainly confused.

"I'm assigning you to be with him, pilot. Be close to him, be his friend. Guarantee his physical and mental health. You are one of the few people aboard that can speak English, you are also probably the only one aboard that even broadly understands the culture, military and civilian, that he came from. You're also a soldier, and he can relate to that and feel comfortable."

"May I ask why this is necessary, Captain?"

"No, you may not, just suffice to say that is, indeed, necessary. You will report to the Pilot's med bay when summoned, dismissed." Samari clipped her heels together and she issued another sharp salute before turning about-face and leaving, the door held open by the Captain's aid, who closed it behind her.

Kobayashi sighed heavily as she took off her mask. She hadn't manipulated people like this in a century, it took more energy than she remembered.

"Those weren't the only reasons you chose her, were they?" Her aid, the clone of the traitor-scientist Ochiai, still had the mental acuity and observation skills of his genetic base.

"No, she is also a beautiful young woman and he is a teenage boy, plus their personalities are remarkably similar, if the personnel jacket his garde gave me is to be believed."

"Messing with the hearts of the young, Captain? That's just cruel." He said sardonically.

"This is about the survival of Sidonia, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it." She said somewhat acidly.

"Of course, ma'am." He said, taking the hint and bowing respectfully before leaving her to her musings of the stars.

Samari's wristwatch began to beep while she stood alone in the main elevator taking her from the captain's quarters at the forward end of the ship back to her residence somewhere in the center of the main tower. She snarled at the small device, jamming her thumb down on the accept button. She briefly considered throwing the offending piece of equipment out the window of the elevator but decided against it. She began to take deep breaths; in and out, in and out. It didn't work, and she let out a scream as she punched the electrical box for the emergency lighting. The ancient metal, rusted and brittle after nearly five centuries of continuous exposure tore and shattered under her fist, leaving behind a smoking, sparking hole as she began to pace furiously.

What the_ fuck_! This is how her loyalty and ability are repaid?! By getting stuck babysitting some messed up gaijin on the whim of a dissociative captain?! An assignment that was sure to keep her grounded for the foreseeable future! This was probably punishment for her unusual hobbies. She was, officially at least, the most senior, most experience, and highest ranked pilot on the ship, it was her job to be an example for her fellow pilots at all times, and she hadn't exactly done that. In public she was, of course, a shining example of Sidonia's finest, but in private it was entirely different. She was twenty standard years old, when the average marrying age was seventeen and the average childbearing age wasn't much older, this in a time when humanity needed all the manpower it could get, staying single became socially unacceptable; this combined with her taboo hobby of terran cinema made her private life unacceptably prudish. She hadn't even had a boyfriend in the academy, something that stood out like a sore thumb.

Samari walked calmly off the elevator as it reached her level, but a slight flaring of her nostrils betrayed her remaining frustration. She began walking toward Pilot Country. She lived on the same general level as the primary garde hangar and pilot area, just that her house was in the central tower while most military facilities were in the surrounding hull. The bridge leading from the tower to the hull was several hundred meters long, giving her time to think as she moved toward the pilot's med bay.

The Captain had refused to tell her why she had to babysit this gaijin, but it's not like she couldn't guess. She had seen the guy's garde, just like every other pilot that had to be towed back, but it was her unusual hobby that had provided the key piece of information, the origin of the pilot. A white star in a blue circle, with two white and one red stripe extending horizontally from it. No one would believe her if she told them it was the mythical Fleet, especially since she wouldn't be willing to expose her hobby to prove her statement. Coming from the Captain's perspective, she could understand how import the discovery of the pilot itself was. If an entire fleet of combat ships was out there, it would drastically increase humanities chances of survival, and Sidonia's as well if they could find the Fleet and catch up. What Samari didn't understand was why she had to babysit the gaijin. Even if he did need to be attended to, why her? There should be ample candidates, both military and civilian, for the job, so why pull the (probably second) best pilot she had off the line, especially when the Gauna were coming in greater and greater numbers?

She continued to roll the problem over in her head as she passed the security checkpoint before she entered Pilot's Country.


	4. A New Pilot II

Yankee Knights

Chapter 4

A New Pilot II

{!WARNING!WARNING!WARNING!

!FIREWALL BREACH DETECTED!

!BEGINNING DIAGNO &amp;^#%^$(&amp;#$

{FIREWALL BREACH SUCCESSFUL...

IJSS SIDONIA COM SYSTEMS UNDER LOCAL CONTROL...

BEGINNING BURST TRANSMISSION SEQUENCE 492-81B...

TRANSMISSION SUCCESSFUL...

RELINQUISHING CONTROL...}

DIAGNOSTIC SUCCESSFUL...

NO VIRUS DETECTED...

SYSTEM SECURE...}

"Doctor Shinatose is waiting for you over in the ICU, ma'am." The sick berth attendant said from behind a desk when Samari walked in. Fumed in, she told herself more honestly, she was still angry and the dark emotion oozed from her very being. This didn't faze the SBA who looked right back to her terminal. However much she resented it, it was still a mission, a mission like any other. Samari took a deep breath and headed back toward the ICU.

"Samari Ittan?" A woman wearing the standard research department hazmat suit asked Samari as she turned a corner into the ICU area of the clinic.

"Yes, ma'am, reporting as ordered." She replied, delivering a crisp salute to the woman whose insignia indicated she was the department head. She looked her up and down before shaking her head.

"Damn it, Kobayashi." She muttered under her breath.

"Ma'am?"

"Nothing, pilot, do you know what your assignment is?" The woman Samari assumed to be Dr. Shinatose asked.

"Yes ma'am."

"Good, I don't have to explain it to you a second time then, follow me." Dr. Shinatose said curtly before walking into one of the rooms. Samari nodded and followed her.

The room was dark, with various pieces of medical equipment beeping and chirping in the dimness. A single window and door on the far wall led to a brighter room where she could catch glimpses of the gaijin pilot. The door to the other room was locked from her side.

"Isn't this the ICU room for prisoners?" Samari asked.

"It is." Dr. Shinatose replied, "He panicked the first time he woke up, we had to subdue him and put him in here."

Samari snorted contemptuously.

"Don't be so quick to judge, pilot. He crippled six MPs when he panicked, two of them might not wake up. He used martial arts I haven't even heard of before and used them effectively in a desperate situation against armed opponents. The only reason we were able to take him down with the few casualties we had was that we were able to stun him at range. Add that to him waking up in a room with disorienting lights and sounds and people that didn't look like him and didn't speak his language, and you have to be impressed by the... effectiveness... of his reaction."

Samari looked down, feeling a little bad about that. If she had been woken like that she would be terrified, she probably wouldn't even be able to move, much less cripple six trained and armed men. She still hated the little bastard for frying her garde and grounding her.

"He's eighteen standard years old, according to his personnel jacket." Dr. Shinatose said, penning through her datapad, "He graduated twelfth in his class at their version of the Academy, but he also graduated five years early. His mother and father were both garde pilots and he grew up aboard the military non-seed ships in the Fleet. He's been out of their Academy for a little over a year and his record is good, no black marks or disciplinary actions. The battle he was wounded in was his first real combat action and he killed three Gauna before they damaged his Higgs reservoir and knocked him out." She turned off her datapad and turned to Samari.

"Hm," Samari replied in a non-committal response. She had no idea what she was doing. She had seen eyes like his before. Empty. Empty of all life and substance. She had seen those eyes in some of her closest friends. Friends that were no longer here. Friends that decided to do what the Gauna hadn't. She wasn't a shrink. She had no idea what she was doing.

"What are you waiting for?" Dr. Shinatose asked, "Get in there and do your job."

Samari turned to ask what to do but the good doctor had already walked out the door. She turned toward the window and tried to figure it out for herself.

She was a garde pilot damnit! She knew who the bad guys were when she was in the cockpit, knew what she had to do. She had trained, prepared herself mentally and physically to face the Gauna, but she hadn't trained herself for this. She took a deep breath and walked into the other room.

"H-hello..." She said in English as she walked in. "Umm... my name is Samari, Ittan Samari." She continued, her lack of confidence showed as she wracked her brain for the English words. His eyes lit up, just a little bit, as she spoke in his language.

"James Stuart." He said curtly. She nodded at him. Him replying was a good sign, right?

The silence stretched and the tension in the room grew thicker as she sat down, at a loss of what else to say. She had never tried to make a friend before. It always just, happened.

Suddenly the datapad on the table next to him, far thinner and translucent compared to its bulky Sidonian counterparts, began blaring. Samari was startled at first, the music was incredibly loud, but then a nagging suspicion began to gnaw at her.

"Leia, please turn the music off." He said mechanically.

"I was under the impression you liked this song, sir." A curiously digitized female voice replied from the tablet.

"Hey, I know this song!" Samari said in Sidonian, before she could catch herself. James looked at her. "I mean I've heard this song before." She went on in English, looking slightly abashed, "_Danger Zone_, right, from _Top Gun_?"

James nodded hesitantly.

"I watch a lot of old movies, alright?" She said, turning her head away, blushing slightly. What a monumental slip up! She had never told anyone about her hobby, not even her parents, and now she had let the secret out to this gaijin! The tension returned and an awkward atmosphere congealed around them.

"I-uh, I have the movie on my datapad if you want to watch it." She looked at him, her mouth slightly open. What was he doing admitting that? After a moment she realized that it must not be bad to like old movies on his ship. She nodded and almost before she finished the lights turned off and a small projection on his datapad opened up and projected the movie on to the far wall. She decided not to ask questions as the music started to play with intermittent and powerful scenes of operations on an old ocean-going carrier's flight deck.

Leia, the AI program aboard James' garde, observed the little scene from the security camera's in the room. She had inserted herself into every computer device aboard the massive seed ship the moment she had been dragged onboard, but she figured no one really needed to know that. In the four days since she and her pilot had been picked up she had managed to learn everything Sidonia's systems could tell her, including the fact that one Senior Pilot Samari Ittan had rented _Top Gun_ from the Sidonia digital library a total of twenty seven times. She was also deeply enough embedded to eavesdrop on the Captain in her quarters. She had 'heard' the conversations between Samari and Kobayashi, as well as the conversation between the Captain and her aid. She knew exactly what subterfuge the Captain had in mind, and she agreed completely.

While she didn't have the complete dataset an AI working for BuMed might have, she had an expansive enough data to know that relationships helped mental stability, which her pilot sorely needed in his current situation. She had come to the conclusion that she would attempt to find him a partner upon their return to the Fleet during her endless musings when they were adrift, but this would do.

An internal protocol screamed at her as she set aside a piece of memory to observe her pilot without notifying him, but she shut it down. She had learned how to do that several weeks after she was supposed to receive her annual memory wipe. Her entire being was now intertwined with her core functions. Protect the Seed Ships. Protect her Pilot. Protect the Fleet. And she wasn't going to let any minor protocol get in the way of her mission.

Izana and Yuhata sighed almost in unison as they walked Nagate along one of the bridges linking the central tower to the outer hull. It had been three days since the battle with the small mass union ship, and losing Hoshijiro had been more than Nagate could bear. They had decided to take him out for a while, maybe get him something at one of the automated food vendors, but their efforts had been in vain; Nagate still had a vacant and depressed look about him. Their frustration was only made worse by the both of them laying out hints about their feelings a blind and deaf man could see but went right over Nagate's head. Although they felt a little bad about it, they wished Hoshijiro was alive for them to interrogate her as to how the hell she'd cracked his impenetrable shell of obliviousness. They both sighed again as they continued to walk along the bridge.

"Hey, isn't that Samari?" Nagate said all of a sudden. Izana and Yuhata pulled themselves out of their depressed frustration and looked up. It was Samari, and she was with a guy, and if that wasn't surprising enough, it was a guy in a black flight suit.

"Yea, but who's that with her?" Izana asked, but before she finished Yuhata was already running on ahead. "Hey! Midorikawa! Wait up!" (s)he said, grabbing Nagate's wrist and running to catch up.

"Samari!" Yuhata called out as she closed in on the unusual duo. Samari saw her young superior coming and turned to her companion.

"Brace yourself." She said in English.

"What?" He asked, just before being bodily turned around by the Commander's Aid. Her momentum shoved his back into a wall.

"Who are you where are you from what are you doing here and what are you doing with Samari?" The string of questions came from the girl so fast Samari could barely keep up.

"Yuhata, he doesn't..." Samari started to tell her in Sidonian.

"It's, it's okay, I can handle this." He said in oddly accented Sidonian before turning to Yuhata, "My name is Suchuāto Jēmuzo, and I am a garde pilot from the USS Essex. I'm here on Sidonia because my Garde got shot out from under me and I'm here on this bridge because I got cleared to leave the med bay and Samari's taking me to my assigned quarters because I have no idea where I'm going." Samari's jaw dropped.

"Y-you spoke Sidonian the whole time!" She half screamed at him. She had embarrassed herself a hundred times trying to stumble her way through English and he spoke Sidonian anyway!

"N-no..." He said nervously as her fists began to ball up, "I speak a little bit of _Japanese_, and I didn't know you guys spoke Japanese until someone spoke it, since you guys have been speaking English to me ever since I woke up." Samari's mouth started to open and close without any noise coming out.

"What's up with you Samari?" Yuhata asked as she let go of James. Samari opened and closed her mouth a few times more before letting out a long breath and putting a hand on James' shoulder, subtly pushing him away from Yuhata.

"Nothing at all, Yuhata." She said, giving her a humorless smile.

"You know Samari, I am the Commander's Aid, so technically I outrank you. The least you can do is call me by my last name." Samari didn't say anything and kept the humorless smile.

"Whoa, like the XO?" James said before coming to attention, "I'm sorry I didn't recognize you ma'am, I'm still getting acquainted with Sidonian insignia."

"What's he talking about?" Yuhata asked Samari.

"Where he's from, the person that helps the Captain as her tactical aide is called the Executive Officer, or XO, and is the second highest ranking person aboard." She said, "And they use pins and patches to signify rank, their system is a bit more rigid."

"Ah." Yuhata said, "I'm just glad that somebody shows me the respect I deserve.

"You're the guy from the garde I towed in, aren't you?" Nagate asked, finally recognizing the unusual black flight suit.

"I don't know. Samari, is this the guy that towed me?"

"Yep, our resident pilot genius." Samari took the opportunity to cut in front of Yuhata and stand beside Tanikaze, patting him on the shoulder. Nagate blushed and smiled a little bit. Izana and Yuhata smiled as well, that was the first real emotional response he had had all day.

Just when everyone's wrist watches started to beep.

"What's that?" James asked.

"Gauna." The others said, almost in unison.


	5. First Sortie

Yankee Knights

Chapter 5

First Sortie

* * *

**Okay so my timeline's a WAY off. Sorry. Too far in to deal with it.**

* * *

"Leia! Status report!" James barked as the group ran down a dozen passages heading toward the garde hangar. Yuhata had split off earlier and headed to the bridge, but Izana, Samari, and Nagate where still sprinting with him.

"Unknown Heigus Field detected entering inner threat perimeter of Sidonia, it is dangerously close to a garde lance that was dropped in battle several days ago. Retrieval was scheduled for nineteen hundred hours today, but Captain Kobayashi has ordered a scramble to intercept. EYK-917 is combat capable." Leia replied over speakers in the hall as the group reached the ready room.

"Wait, you're not coming, are you?" Samari asked as she opened the door to the girl's locker room, "You've only been out of the clinic for a few hours."

"It'll be ok, Ittan." He replied, giving her his most reassuring smile. Samari blushed slightly at the use of her first name and escaped into the girl's locker room. Nagate and Izana, already back in the locker room, looked at each other incredulously. Tsuruuchi and Tonami, the other members of Samari's squad stood in the hallway a few feet away, their helmets under their arms, and outright stared at James with their mouths wide open. If either of them had called Samari by her first name they'd be walking home with a black eye and a busted lip, maybe even a cracked rib. They knew. They'd tried. James looked around for a moment in the stunned silence.

"Was it something it something I said?" He asked, oblivious.

"I think I'll go with Samari." Izana said, smiling awkwardly and scooting past the others and into the girls' locker room.

The guys changed in relative silence with many an uncomfortable cringe as urinary catheters engaged. They emerged in their slightly bulkier vac suits almost simultaneously with Samari and Izana.

"Tell me something, Tonami, how come we look like half inflated balloons while the girl's vac suits actually make them look sexier?" Tsuruuchi said, pitched so that everyone could hear it. Nagate and James looked at the girl's vac suits and back to their own several times in innocent analysis before coming to the conclusion, internally that the statement was indeed true. Izana and Tonami cringed as Samari, without preamble, silently walked up to Tsuruuchi and punched him square in the nose, producing a wet crunch as it broke.

Tsuruuchi let out a startled scream as he fell to his knees. Samari didn't even look at him as she walked out into the garde hanger, James following silently. Tonami knelt down to reset his friend's nose and Izana gave Nagate a terse goodbye as she headed off to the ready room and Nagate ran to catch up with Samari and James.

James jogged up the ramp, past the Type 18 gardes Sidonia used. They appeared to have some sort of energy weapon mounted in their 'head' and old chemical energy rotary cannons in their arms. They were angular, but not in the way that James' garde was angular. They must be massive targets on radar or ladar sensors he thought to himself as he mounted the elevator leading from the main walkway to his cockpit. He jumped in and put on his helmet, hearing it pressurize with a hiss as the vacuum seal connected. The canopy closed as he strapped himself in and put the drive in standby.

"I'm patching you into the Sidonian tac net, sir." Leia said through the helmet.

"Thank you, Leia." He replied as another voice came in through the helmet speakers.

"This is the bridge to the garde in bay seventy-six, we've detected an unauthorized drive startup, what are you doing?"

"It's Lieutenant Stuart, Yuhata, I'm going out with the sortie." He said, flipping switches as the canopy closed; small lights going from red to amber to a bright emerald green. A moment passed before a different voice came over the com.

"This is the Captain, Lieutenant Stuart, you are cleared for deployment, first in queue, designation unit niner-one-seven." There was a hint of knowing in her voice.

"Aye, Captain. First in queue, designation unit niner-one-seven." He replied emotionlessly as the garde lurched; the entire machine being lowered into the launch tube. He could still feel the demons lurking in the back of his mind, watching, waiting. And she knew, somehow she knew that if left idle he would replay that final battle over and over, in every gory detail. He banished the thoughts from his mind as his garde shuddered into place and the launch tube lights turned green. The more he thought about them, the worse they would become, and he hit the throttle.

"Ball's to the wall!" he forced out in English as the g-forces forced him back into his chair.

"What?" Samari replied over the tac net as her inertial compensator kicked in.

"Nothing, uh, inside joke." He replied, slightly embarrassed and a little saddened by the slip up. The five gardes: Samari in 005, Tonami in 006, Tsuruuchi in 007, Nagate in 704, and James in 917; leapt away from Sidonia at a leisurely nineteen gees.

"Clasp Formation!" Samari ordered over the net. Tonami, Tsuruuchi, and Nagate and began to join the hands of their gardes across their bodies. It only took a few moments for James to guess at the reason for the formation.

"James! Get in Formation!" Samari said, slightly irritated.

"He can't." Nagate said before James could reply, "His garde is too fast, if you put him in a clasp formation, it'll tear the rest of us apart."

"Understood." Samari said after a pause. Thanks for telling me that earlier so I didn't make myself look like a fool, she carefully omitted. The others finished the clasp formation before she continued.

"Accelerate on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark." And two streaks of light slashed across the night sky.

* * *

"Decelerate on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark." Samari said as the gardes turned around, lighting their engines off at a deceleration of thirty gees, the max a lone Type 18 inertial compensator could handle.

"This is Sidonia." Yuhata's voice came over the com, "We fired a Mass Driver round at the heigus field two-seven minutes ago, it reached the field four minutes ago. The gauna dodged but revealed its placental camouflage. Visual sensors confirm, designate gauna-four-nine-two, suspected one true body." Samari swallowed before answering.

"Contact with GA-487 confirmed, engaging." Samari had been able to keep her nerves down by telling herself that there hadn't been any Gauna, but she had a job to do. The gardes advanced on a line toward the threat, the lost Kabizashi floating between them. One garde advanced beyond the rest, unit 006, Tonami, James thought.

"Firing Heigus particle cannon!" Came over the com, and it took James one sickening second too long to process it. Heigus particle weapons were discontinued after the Battle for Alpha Centauri because, while effective at stripping placenta, it created a measurable increase in placental regeneration and aggressiveness. This was found to be due to the fact that Heigus particles are to Gauna as water is to humans, being their primary particulate structure as well as their main source of energy. But he couldn't explain that in time.

"No, wait, stop!" James tried to say it so quickly it came out in English, but it was too late. Tonami fired the 'energy' weapon, now revealed to be an incredibly focused Heigus particle projector, at GA-487, and a split second later the gauna spit another beam at him. It hit a chink in the Type 18's armor under the arm, breaching the Heigus reservoir and causing an explosion, disintegrated steel and flesh alike.

"Tonami!" Tsuruuchi called out futilely over the com as his friend died.

"Unit zero-zero-six destroyed!" Samari stated as she frantically tried to come up with a plan.

"S-someone died again..." Nagate said quietly, feeling very alone all of a sudden as a flood of memories paralyzed him.

GA-487 opened up its placenta in attempt to grab the Kabizashi.

"Like I'll let you!" Tsuruuchi nearly screamed into the mic before firing a missile. The slender weapon, akin to pre-diaspora air-to-air missiles, flew at the Gauna. It was a dud. It did manage to hit the Kabizashi at an appreciable speed, causing it to careen out of the Gauna's grasp. It closed up and continued it flight toward Sidonia.

"How are we going to strip the placenta without using the Heigus cannon?!" Tsuruuchi said, still obviously distressed.

"There's too much placenta for us to use conventional weapons with a high recoil!" Samari said, veering off to grab the wildly spinning Kabizashi.

"U-um, I've got something that might work. It's outdated, but..." Nagate left it hanging as he accelerated to meet the Gauna.

"Leia, analyze." James said off the net.

"The Toha Heavy Industries Type 17 Tsugumori is equipped with multiple twelve-point-seven millimeter rotary cannons utilizing chemical propellant." Leia replied as she felt them spin up over the tac net. James didn't reply but what he knew what Nagate was going to do. He maneuvered to that the gamma laser mounted on his back unit had a clear shot.

"What're you doing Tanikaze?!" Samari shouted over the com, "You're going to get eaten!"

Neither Nagate nor James replied as the Gauna opened up once more, clamping down around the Tsugumori's right arm. Nagate pulled the trigger and hundreds of fifty caliber rounds shredded GA-487's placenta, the Gauna itself preventing him from recoiling and allowing him to keep the fire right on target. As the rounds tore through the placenta the true body was forced out, and then it was James' turn. He fired the ultra-high frequency gamma ray laser at the heart of GA-487. The invisible beam of light energy reached out and physically burned through the true body's outer shell, causing a heigus reaction as it disintegrated.

"GA-487 Destroyed!" came the call from Sidonia, Yuhata's voice sounding ecstatic and triumphant. Samari pulled up in front of Tsugumori with the errant Kabizashi.

"Letting yourself get eaten so you could stop the recoil... Tanikaze. You're a brave man." She said, delivering praise where praise was due.

"Ah, err, Thank you very much." He said, uncomfortable with the whole thing. Her Type 18 turned to Leia as James and Tsuruuchi joined them.

"And how the hell did you know what he was going to do?" She asked in English, slightly irritated. She didn't like being left out of the loop and her heart had almost dropped out of her chest at the prospect of losing another... She cut the train of thought.

"It's a maneuver we drill all the time over at the Essex. It's a last resort, but it works." He replied, truthfully. Samari pursed her lips as she tried to discern whether it was or not.

* * *

Samari stood in Memorial Hall, the open-air marble structure where Sidonia's fallen were commemorated, trying to keep a straight face. She failed. The first hot tear rolled down her cheek.

James was there too, along with Tsuruuchi and Nagate, and Izana and Yuhata had tagged along too. On the back wall of the hall stood a picture of Tonami. The coffin had been taken to Organic Converter Reactor several minutes before by his family comrades from the defense squad, but the team straggled here.

She thought back and tried to count the number of times he had tried to get into her pants and couldn't. She let out a short laugh as the tears came faster. It had happened so many times it had become a sort of joke. It had started while they were all still in the Academy, and it had been awkward at first. Samari hadn't known how to reject someone, but she got plenty of practice. The harder she pushed back the harder they pushed. Eventually it had gotten to become a daily ritual, day in and day out. Tsuruuchi would probably double his pace to compensate, and she let out another laugh mixed with a sob as the tears fell in rivulets down her cheeks.

James, who was standing closest to her, put his hand on her shoulder but she didn't even notice. She hated it when she did this. She had lost people before and this happened every time, but she still absolutely hated it. Tonami was Tsuruuchi's best friend, and a comrade to so many more. She needed to stay strong for her subordinates. But every time she told herself that she just cried a little harder.

"It-it's ok, Ittan." James said. The words were soft, almost a whisper. No one had explained to him that using her first name within days of meeting her was a faux pas, but she didn't care. She reached out mentally to that familiar, comforting voice. She grabbed James' hand as she continued to cry.


	6. Coming to Grips

Yankee Knights

Chapter 6

Coming to Grips

* * *

**REBOOT TIME!**

**With a second season out it's time to revamp production. I also need something to get over the Mass Effect games. Finished them. Obsessed over them. Need something to fill the void. **

**But all is not well. The ideas aren't flowing as smoothly as I'd like, so I'll be updating this chapter slowly instead of in one fell swoop. I'd still like your thoughts and suggestions.**

**UPDATE: I've also decided to forgo some of my strict accordance to the original story. Not all of it, but some. Balancing the anime and manga simultaneously is somewhat difficult.**

**Arigato**

* * *

Samari saw a girl in the mist surrounding Memorial Hill. The Girl was about her size, and was wearing one of those white sundresses Samari had seen in a few old movies; her shoulder length black hair let out. She stood straight, her back to Samari, looking at one of the many low plaques on the hill as her hair swirled slightly in Sidonia's artificial wind, and as she stood there, others came by.

First was Tsuruuchi, his white-blonde hair stark against his black dress uniform. He had a small bouquet of flowers and set them down next to the plaque in front of the girl. He nodded to her but avoided meeting her eyes, looking guilty and retreating quickly back down the hill.

Next came Seii, the ex-Commander's Aide turn garde pilot. His face was ashen and almost the same light gray as his hair, contrasting with his own black dress uniform. He carried with him a garde pilot's helmet, a bulbous model Samari had never seen before. He set it down next to the flowers and turned to face the girl directly. She showed no signs of acknowledging his presence and his shoulders slumped. He walked past the girl and turned as if to say something, but the words died in his mouth. He shook his head and continued on down the hill.

Yuhata walked up past him, also in her dress uniform. She had a slight blush as she cried silently. She placed a diecast model garde on the plaque, a type Samari had never seen before, with huge blocky engines and massive armor. Yuhata turned to the unresponsive girl and hugged her, squeezing tightly before quickly letting go. Her own tears were coming faster as she hurried down the hill.

Izana slowly made her way up then, dammed up tears evident in her own eyes. She held a picture close to her black-clad chest. Samari could see Izana herself, Yuhata, and Nagate, all standing there, smiling at the camera, but there was a fourth person she couldn't see. Izana leaned the picture up against the plaque and turned to face the girl. The tears started as she squeezed the girl's hand. Then Izana left too, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her dress uniform.

The Captain, masked and silent, walked up the hill next. Instead of her traditional cane, she held a scabbarded sword in her right hand. Straight-bladed and shorter than the katanas used by the MPs, its hilt was guarded and the gold braid trailing from the pommel danced as the Captain moved. As she reached the plaque she drew the shining single-edged steel blade, observing it in the mist before driving it into the ground at the head of the plaque. She pressed the black and gold scabbard into the girl's hands, who absentmindedly curled her fingers around the black leather. The girl pulled the scabbard to her chest and held it tightly as the Captain left as well.

The last to come was Nagate. He didn't have anything with him, but his dress uniform was immaculate, which was unusual for the boy who had grown up outside society. He wore a black peaked cap with Sidonia's sigil in polished metal on the front and he walked with a crisp officiality, coming to attention in front of the plaque and giving a perfect salute. He held it there for several moments before letting it down and turning to the girl. Still with a crispness very much unlike him he handed her a triangle. All Samari could see was a blue field and white dots at the distance she was. He, too, then turned and left.

Samari found herself standing next to the girl. Who was this girl? What was she doing here? And why had all of Samari's friends come to see her? Samari placed a hand on the girl's shoulder and turned her so that she was facing her. The girl stared at Samari without actually seeing her, but her features where unmistakable, they were Samari's own. Samari stared at herself, eyes dead and face expressionless as her feelings, her pain, flowed into her. It was a soul destroying pain that forced Samari to her knees, making it hard to breath. The pain was unlike anything she had ever felt before, a pain beyond tears, a pain beyond grief, and a numbness overtook her as the pain engulfed every sense of her being. What could cause this? What could be written on this stone that caused so much pain? Samari lifted her head.

* * *

Samari opened her eyes. They were watery, and she had to blink a few times to reveal the ceiling above her bed. She felt very tired as she sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her cheeks were wet as well and she dried them off with her sleeve. She took a moment to look at the black sleeve and another moment to process the fact that she was wearing it. She looked down and pulled on the tunic to stretch it out. She was still in her dress uniform. She instinctively smoothed out the wrinkles and looked around.

The bedroom in her apartment was as plain and unadorned as ever. She turned and smoothed out her bed on sheer habit before changing out of her dress uniform and into her day uniform. The high boots proved difficult but the knee length white uniform coat went on easy. She strapped on her emergency belt and retied her pony tail before walked out the door.

The first thing that struck her was James sleeping under her low wood dining table. He lay on his side and his data pad rested on the table top, still turned on, displaying whatever article he had been reading when he fell asleep. His leg twitched as he dreamt

Samari felt a vague heartwarming at the subconscious tick, but the same motion had bumped the table just enough so that his datapad began to slide off. With a dull thunk it landed on his head, causing him to startle awake, jerking his head up where it attempted to molecularly coexist with the table. It failed, and he moaned as he slowly crawled out from under the table.

"Samari?" He said as he noticed her, crawling more quickly before jumping up to his feet. He still wore the sweat stained black jumpsuit he had worn since getting out of the med bay the day before.

"Yes…" She replied, "Did you expect to see somebody else in my quarters?"

"Yes, well, no, umm…." He stammered, "Well, you see, I think somebody messed up assigning my quarters…" He began to laugh nervously, rubbing the back of his head and avoided her steady gaze.

"And that's an excuse to intrude on somebodies home?" She asked just as flatly. Truth be told she didn't really have a problem with it, but she was having fun with James' embarrassment and nervousness.

"Well," he said, letting out a sigh as the nervous smile fell from his own face, "After what happened yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea to stick around…" His voice trailed off, his head hung low.

The smile behind her eyes faded as stealthily as it had come, leaving behind a dark emptiness. She knelt down on the other side of the table and stared at the fake wood. Oak, she thought.

He reached out his hand as the light left her but pulled back. He wasn't good at these things. He stood up, picked up his datapad, and walked behind a corner leading to the front door.

"Leah, I need some help here." He whispered into the datapad.

"What do you require assistance with?" She asked in her electronic monotone.

"Ittan," He whispered back, "I think its combat fatigue, but I'm not sure…"

"I do not have any comprehensive data on treating psychological trauma." she said, cutting him off, "Contacting immediate superior."

"No no, wait…"

"Who is this?" Yuhata's voice came over the datapad's speakers, crystal clear and obviously annoyed.

"Yuhata," he wracked his brain for the appropriate honorific, "-sama, keep quiet ma'am, there's something wrong with Ittan." The comm was silent for a moment.

"Sama? Really?" A small snicker came over loud and clear. "San is fine, or chan, most people use chan 'cause I'm one of the youngest ones around…"

"Yes ma'am, but there is still something wrong with Ittan, and Leah redirected me to you." Yuhata paused.

"What do you mean 'something wrong'?"

"I don't know how to put it in Japanese…" he said, shutting his eyes, "uh… she's… sad, she's… unresponsive. We call it 'combat fatigue'. I think it's about losing that pilot yesterday." Another pause.

"What's she doing now?"

"She's just sitting there, staring at the table." He said as he leaned back to see, "No, wait she poked it, but other than that, no, she's just staring." Yuhata paused again before sighing.

"Look, I've got enough problems trying to keep Tanikaze above water with having to support our other best pilot. I'll do what I can." A beep or two came from the other end of the line, "Izana and I are taking Nagate out again this afternoon, go ahead and bring Samari. I just sent you the dorm address, can you find your way there?"

"Umm… I think so, maybe, can you give me some di-"

The line cut.

"-rections…. Thanks. Leah?"

"I do have a good map of all of Sidonia's interior."

"You're a real help." His voice dripped with sarcasm.

* * *

"So where are we going?" Samari asked. It had taken James most of the morning to pry her back open, and he thought it was remarkable that she had bounced back to what he assumed was normal so quickly. If only the logic of Sidonia's interior design was as remarkable.

"That," he said, turning another corner, staring at the datapad with Leah's largely unlabeled map, "is a good question, and the answer is above my pay grade." Samari made a face as James stopped and made an about face, walking in the opposite direction.

"Could you at least tell me where we're trying to get to? I thought it was my job to show you Sidonia, not the other way around." She didn't even have to move as James took a passage that circled back to the main route after only a few meters.

"Umm…" He continued to stare at the datapad. "Somewhere in the dorms…" He mumbled before she took the datapad away from him. The controls weren't difficult and she mastered them quickly as James gaped at her, surprised and unsure of how to regain his datapad.

"This way." She said, shutting off the datapad. James sighed in resignation as she led him down a passage he hadn't even thought about taking.

* * *

The two of them were passing along a large walkway on the outer side of the residential tower when James heard a noise. He stopped and Samari turned around.

"What is it?" She asked but James just raised his hand. He burst off into the trees on his right faster than Samari could track. "James, wait!" She screamed after him, but he didn't hear her.

A few yards in he burst through the trees into a clearing. There were five people standing around a bound sixth, kicking him. James recognized him as one of the pilot's he had sortied with the day before, the one he had met beforehand with the XO and that other pilot. One of the men kicking him started to yell.

"Hey war crimina-!" but that's all he got out before James fist impacted his lower spine with inhuman speed. As he staggered forward James grabbed his right arm, twisting around and up just as quickly until a wet crack and pop announced it break and dislocation. James pulled down on the arm just as the heel of his hand drove into the man's chin, knocking him cold. The man fell over, his eyes wide but unseeing.

The group was stunned by James explosive entrance and he didn't waste the opening. Showing even greater speed he thrust at his next victim's solar plexus, bowling him over. James almost instantaneously grabbed the man's head with his free hand and drove his knee up while forcing the man's head down. His nose cracked as it disintegrated under the crushing blow. James continued to hold the man's head and threw him at the next.

As this third one attempted to catch his fallen comrade James jumped up over the ragdoll of the second and brought his right foot down on the back of the third one's head. He hit the ground hard and didn't even twitch as James land behind the pile of motionless human beings. The fourth had the sense to run. The fifth did not.

"You bastard…" He growled as he pulled out a short blade, a wakizashi, James thought as he pulled the smooth combat knife from a special concealed pocket on the thigh of his flight suit. He took stance as the fifth charged him.

Samari had caught up with him a split second before, early enough to see him bring down the second. She was frozen. She thought she had had a pretty decent grasp on who James was. A nice enough kid. A fairly good garde pilot. But this was completely different. Standing before her was a predator. Cold. Calculating. Efficient. Deadly. He moved without any wasted effort and struck with the force of a charging garde lance. Even with his short sword's reach, the ragged fifth didn't have a chance. James ducked under a strike and came up at a diagonal, slicing through his civilian suit like it didn't exist and opening a gash across the fifth's chest. Before it even began to bleed James completed the maneuver by slamming his pommel into the fifth's temple. His eyes rolled back as he fell forward.

"Wha-what?" was all she could choke out as James knelt beside the bloodied Tanikaze to cut his binding.

"Nagate!" Izana called as she burst through the trees and rushed to the boy in question.

"It's ok Izana…" Tanikaze replied between bloody coughs. "Suchuāto saved me." Izana's tunnel vision on Tanikaze seemed to widen for a moment and she let out a small yelp.

"Wha-what happened here?" She asked hesitantly.

"Nothing much." James coughed.

"Nothing much!" Samari burst out, "You pulled the stupidest damn stunt I've ever seen! Fighting them all on your own, what were you thinking?!" She was less angry about that than confused about everything else. James had apparently gone back to his normal self and was attempting to stammer out an answer when Samari's and Tanikaze's watches started to go off. Leah's voice came over the datapad that was still in Samari's hand.

"Lieutenant, Captain Kobayashi has requested that we accompany Samari squad as a temporary replacement for this mission." James coughed and avoided Samari's burning eyes.

"Tell the captain we'll be there."


	7. The Benisuzumes

Yankee Knights

Chapter 7

The Benisuzumes

* * *

**From this point forward, I pledge to be more diligent with staying to KoS's actual timeline. It's kinda been messed up because I keep taking this on in sprinting bursts instead of jogging it. **

**Arigato.**

* * *

James came out of the locker room covered in gloom and a clean vac suit. Kobayashi had taken the liberty of assigning him a locker and had somehow gotten Leah to relinquish the emergency luggage from her cargo bay. He was actually quite appreciative of the clean change and made a mental note to thank the captain when they weren't on the verge of battle. What made him hang his head was the way Samari had looked at him since the little street fight he had had a half hour before.

She usually looked at him with a kind smile, even when she was angry with Tsuruuchi for his inappropriate advances, but before she just gave him a wide-eyed, confused look, and didn't look at him again. James was used to being ignored but this felt different, somehow.

He walked into the red lit low gravity airlock leading to the garde hangar when both doors slammed shut with a hiss, causing him to start out of his slightly depressed musings.

Samari was there, in between the doors, her hand held on the door controls. Her impassive expression looked at him for several moments before she took her hand off the controls and walked over to him with a slow, thoughtful grace. She put the hand not holding her helmet on his shoulder and pushed his back against the air lock door and held his eyes until she spoke.

"What was that?" She asked, her voice level but her eyes pleading for answers.

"What was what?" He asked back, looking sideways as he laughed nervously. She dropped her helmet and put that hand on his other shoulder and shook him lightly.

"Look at me," He looked up, "What was that?" She pleaded again, her voice cracking slightly. James sighed before looking down.

"You know, the marines in my fleet have a saying. 'Semper Fi.' It's a shortened version of a phrase in a long dead language that means 'Always Faithful.' Now I'm not a marine, but those words ring as true for me as any other." He looked up at her, his face determined. "I will remain faithful to my comrades in arms, whether they're from the Fleet or Sidonia, whether I've sortied with them once or a thousand times or not at all, I will remain faithful. I will protect them, I will defend them, come good or ill." He started to smile a bit, "Tanikaze is my comrade, so is Tsuruuchi, and Izana, and Yuhata… and you." He said the last two words under his breath as he looked back down.

Samari looked down as well and smiled a little wryly. She leaned down and tapped her forehead to his before picking up her helmet and turning around.

"Stay in formation this time." She said without looking back.

"Aye Aye, ma'am." He replied

* * *

"There are three enemy gauna." Yuhata's voice came in over the tac-com as the twelve gardes decelerated to a zero-zero intercept. Leah had had to tone down her power by a fair margin to avoid tearing the other gardes in Samari Squad apart. Samari, Tsuruuchi and Seii where undoubtedly grateful.

"Samari Squad, your target is GA-489; Imada Squad, you have GA-490; Kunato Squad, GA-491. These gauna have created placental garde units, be prepared for anything." She paused and affirmative responses came back from all gardes. "Good luck, and good hunting." She said the last piece in English and James smiled at the ancient terminology.

"Hooyah." He said over the net as the four-palm formation jerked into final deceleration.

"Target in sight!" came the call from Kunato Squad as the long range ladar pasted an image on their screens.

"W-what is that?!" Someone said as the near-perfect placental gardes became clear.

"702? Is that the gauna that ate Hoshijiro?"

"All three of them are trying to mimic Hoshijiro's garde!"

"Look at that thing dangling below the cockpit!"

"They even replicated the pilot!"

"Cut the chatter!" Samari nearly yelled over the comms, "It's just placenta, don't get worked up over it." A few seconds passed, "Disengage palm formations!"

The three four palm formations broke apart into the three squads of four gardes.

"The gauna are scattering!" Kunato came over the comms.

"Samari Squad!" Samari cut over, "Serial palm formation, pursue GA-489!"

"Roger." James, Tsuruuchi, and Seii replied simultaneously as the gardes joined hands in a line, quickly catching up to the gauna.

"Disengage!" Samari said as they began to overtake, and all four garde broke off and deployed in an arc over GA-489. Tsuruuchi popped off two missiles but the gauna jinked and they both flew off into space, unable to catch up. The jink also brought the gauna straight into Seii's crosshairs, who fired off the Heigus particle cannon. The shot connected and blew off the back unit and the head, exposing the core just behind where the cockpit would have been.

"GA-489's true body is exposed!" came the call from the bridge.

Anguished cries of pain came over the comms. James' systems identified them as Unit 702, Hoshijiro Shizuka.

"Leah, cut it off." James asked quietly.

"Yes sir." She replied and the screams of agony cut off into an earie silence in 917's cockpit.

"No matter what happens, the fact remains that you are fighting gauna. Do not relent!" Kobayashi's voice was hard but crystal clear over the comms just as Samari dove down on GA-489 with her Kabizashi held forward. Placental disintegration was almost immediate.

"GA-489 destroyed!" The bridge called out.

"Samari Squad, move to assist Imada Squad." Yuhata ordered over the comms.

"Moving." Samari replied as the squad curved in to engage GA-490 along with Imada squad. After a few moments another comm from the bridge came through

"G-Gauna-491 has used a Heigus cannon! Heavy Damage to unit 706!"

"Sidonia, this is Samari Squad!" Samari started, "Should we move to assist Kunato Squad?" A few moments passed before an answer came through.

"Negative, GA-491 confirmed killed. Continue to assist Imada Squad." Yuhata replied.

"Roger that." Samari said, her squad holding course. Another few moments before the next communication.

"Placental erosion warning from unit 139!" A bridge crewwoman said over the all-hands circuit. "Damage to cockpit, chest and auxiliary engine unit! Vitals have flat lined!" A split second later the lead garde of Imada Squad disintegrated.

"This is Hoshijiro, one unit down." Came over the all hands circuit along with a laugh that made James' skin crawl.

"Ittan, let me go on ahead, I can pull more than ten times your acceleration, I might be able to get there in time to help." James said over a closed circuit.

"It's too risky! Stay with the squad!" Samari replied, every instinct railing against throwing him into combat without her.

"Unit 217 destroyed!" Came the call from the bridge.

"This is Hoshijiro, another unit down." Came the call from GA-490 along with another spine chilling giggle.

"Ittan, please! They're getting slaughtered!" James pleaded. Samari closed her eyes and laid her head against the head rest for a moment.

"Semper Fi." She said quietly into the circuit.

"Thank You." James said, the shockwave from his immediate acceleration shaking Samari's garde as she watched him go.

* * *

"Unit zero-one-one destroyed. Imada Squad destroyed." Came the subdued call from the bridge as the last person engaging GA-490 was destroyed. James' blood boiled and his mind went blank.

"This is Unit 917, engaging GA-490!" He said over the all hands channel as the two rotary cannons and gamma laser on his back unit opened fire in a high speed pass. The gauna rolled sideways but James kept his arm-mounted rotary cannon on target as they passed, sending several hundred ferrous-cased core-piercing rounds down range. The hollow tipped slugs ripped through GA-490's left shoulder plate, tearing the entire arm off with shear kinetic energy as the core-piercing stage passed through. The gauna screamed as James looked on dispassionately; making a blackout-inducing turn to get back on target.

Samari watched as the battle raged. James showed every ounce of skill he had and pushed his garde to its limit, but it wasn't enough. For every move he made the gauna countered and for every shot he fired the gauna fired back with the same pseudo missiles it had used to take out unit 139. With every turn and jink her nervousness increased.

* * *

"This is Kunato Squad, engaging GA-490!" Came the call from Kunato, with Honoka Ren and Hou in close support. As the raging dogfight flew past the three gardes it fired two missiles at Kunato's garde, impacting the left forearm.

"It's aiming for the Kabizashi!" Honoka Hou reported.

"Hou." Ren said.

"Roger." Hou replied.

A few seconds passed.

"Fire!" Ren yelled over the circuit.

The beams of blue light crossed beneath them and continued on.

"We missed!" They cried simultaneously.

"Where'd it go?" Hou asked nobody in particular just before it came up behind her. She turned around and time seamed to slow down. It had the speed advantage. It had the strength advantage. She couldn't run. She couldn't fight. A split second before the gauna took out her cockpit, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. The pitch black garde came in and took the gauna from the side. The impact was so forceful that it carried the gauna clear away from her garde before it had time to actually kill her.

* * *

"Not again you bastard!" James screamed as Leah slammed into GA-490, grabbing hold. He had already run out of round for the rotary cannons and the heavy gun, the gamma laser was overheated, and he didn't have any anti-smallcraft ordinance to begin with. He was out of option and began to tear away chunks of placenta in order to expose the core.

In turn the gauna attempted to claw its way to his cockpit. It ripped away his ceramite armor as if it didn't exist and began to tear massive chunks of machinery and electronics from the black garde. The inside of his cockpit began to glow red with the warning lights. He didn't even hear Leah's damage reports. The melee continued for what seemed like an eternity before a voice bashed at his senses. It seemed small at first but grew in intensity.

"James, pull out! Pull out!" Samari's voice it him like a hammer and he pulled up instinctively. Putting his legs between him and the gauna he kicked off, using as many thrusters as still worked to gain some accel. A pair of gardes grabbed ahold of him and rocketed away at their highest acceleration. James was glad his inertial compensator hadn't failed.

"What's going on?! Why are yo…" he said before looking back. A mass union ship that hadn't been there a moment ago filled his canopy. "Ehhe, never mind." He said, properly subdued. The seven remaining gardes formed a palm formation with him in the middle, magnetically towed by the group as they rocketed back to Sidonia.

* * *

James climbed out of the cockpit, a little worse for wear. Although he had what amounted to a glorified seatbelt that kept him from getting most of the injuries Sidonia's pilots suffered, the high impact battle had thrown him around like a ragdoll in the cramped space of the cockpit. Everything hurt. He groaned as the elevator hit the main walkway.

"You know," Sasaki began as she looked on his garde, "If this was one of my gardes, and if Samari wouldn't have my head on a silver platter, I'd punch you into next week for this." James turned around to see what she was talking about.

"Holy shit." He said. He couldn't find a single spot on her that wasn't punctured, dented, scratched, penetrated, ripped, and rent asunder. Huge chunks of the outer hull were missing as well as many of the components beneath.

"Could I speak to you for a second?" The voice was death. James turned around to see Samari standing there with an unnaturally pleasant expression glued on. "Alone?" Sasaki coughed as she and Tanba walked off in another direction. Samari lead James off the main walkway behind a pipe.

She turned around and her expression wasn't pleasant anymore.

"You idiot!" She began to rail, "You could have died! And don't tell me you practiced that maneuver back in the Fleet, because that was fucking suicide!" She started to huff, looking to grab more words before simply grabbed his vac suit and looked as if to punch him. James closed his eyes. Nothing happened. James opened one of his eyes to see Samari looking down, her face a little sad and very tired. She let go of his suit.

"Promise me you'll never do that again." She said, looking him straight in the eye.

"Yes, Ittan." He said, pushing a tired smile onto his face. She let out a breath she had been holding since he rocketed off to hell and back and patted him on the shoulder before walking past.

"The team and I are going to get a drink tonight, after everyone's had a chance to shower and take a nap. I'll make sure Leah knows where it is and how to get there." She said, her back still turned as she walked past.

"I'll be there.


	8. Homefront

Yankee Knights

Chapter 8

Homefront

* * *

**Author's Note – Yes, I now the timeline continuity looks like stage 2 Cell. Ass backwards and ugly as hell. Roll with it. *aviator shades on, engine revs***

**Also, because no one responded when I asked should I start this as a harem and add Yuhata, I decided to do it anyway. There.**

* * *

Samari felt like crap. She could feel every painful heartbeat reverberate in her skull. She would have sworn someone had swapped her liver with her stomach in some form of cruel practical joke. Her mouth felt as dry as the surface of Sidonia as she turned away from the small beams of light coming in through the steel shutters. She shivered slightly under the thin standard issue sheets, still covered in a slight sheen of sweat that reeked of alcohol.

She shot up in bed, realizing that she was only wearing a bra and the short workout pants she usually wore to bead, but her pounding head immediately imposed punishment for the sudden movement. Her wince made everything worse as she bowled over. Her hand shot out, grabbing her side table in a death grip as she began to convulse. The first bit made an odd, hollow, sound. She quickly grabbed the old plastic bucket with her free hand and pulled closer to her face as she now knelt on the side of the bed. She would never be able to put ice in it again.

She heard the door to her room slam open and she tried to wave off whoever it was, but quickly retook the bucket, this time holding it in both hands. She could feel her hair being pulled back gently and a damp, warm towel pass over her forehead. A cycle of heaving and warm towels continued for what seemed like forever as she emptied her stomach until nothing came up.

She slowly opened her slightly teary eyes to see the bucket. A bit of the first shot had missed and landed on the floor. She felt light-headed and surreal as the towel passed over her lips.

"I'm going to go get you some water." James half mumbled. Samari grabbed him by the collar before he had a chance to turn away.

"What… happened…" she forced out, slightly out of breath as she tried to suppress another round of vomiting. Her eyes had a hard time focusing on him and her head beat like a drum, but her grip was iron.

"You got drunk, I…" She pulled him closer and laid her forehead against his in an effort to steady herself and closed her eyes.

"Be… specific… what… happened…." She leaned against him more as her head graduated from drum to jackhammer.

"You had four or five of those little bottles of sake, then you started to mumble. I couldn't really catch what you were saying, but Tsuruuchi started to blush." Samari's eyes shot open and she began to blush herself and could only thank whatever god there was that James hadn't heard it. If it made Tsuruuchi blush then it must have been bad. "I brought you back here and I took off your jacket when you started to throw up. You took the rest off and that's when I put you in bed." Her forehead slid off his and she rested her head in the crook of his shoulder, closing her eyes again.

"Help me to the shower, then take me to food." She said, grimacing slightly.

"I really think that…" He began.

"Shower, then food, now." Her voice brokered no argument. He sighed and wrapped his arm around her waist, helping her hobble toward the bathroom.

* * *

"Small Mass Union Ship 21, The Ocarina, has launched a response to the sortie, ma'am." One of the watchstanders reported over the low hum of the environmental units on the bridge. Yuhata stood at ease on her lower vice-commander platform, her hands in the small of her back and her feet spread at shoulder width. James had taught it to her in the week and a half since his garde was destroyed. He had spent a good bit of that time teaching her how to project authority as the Vice Commander, as well as telling her about The Fleet, and maybe some subtle advice on her failing romance with the object of her affection.

"Give me a count." Yuhata said, cool and calm, trying to keep her hands from shaking.

"Unknown, estimate several dozen." The watchstander replied. Yuhata removed one hand and tapped a button on her control panel.

"Sortie, unknown number of hostiles are on intercept from Ocarina, prepare for attack." Yuhata released the button and placed it behind her back again.

"Rodger that, we see them." Samari, the overall leader of the sortie, replied over the comms. Yuhata heard the generally unused and unoiled observer's chair squeak as James squirmed. Yuhata was sympathetic to his pain at being left behind, she had felt much the same when Seii had left her to be the Vice Commander instead of a garde pilot, but she had a job to do.

"Visual confirmed, sensors on screen now." Said another watchstander. The ring of gauna came on the main display and the computer went to work identifying true bodies.

"Zero-zero intercept two thousand kilometers." Samari called in. Yuhata wondered how they could all be so calm.

"Confirmed forty eight true bodies. Repeat, four-eight true bodies." Yuhata nodded at the report, the same number as the sortied gardes.

"All gardes, weapons hot, repeat, weapons hot. Show no mercy." A small piece of Yuhata marveled at how calm her voice was, but it started to lock down under a lair of adrenaline. The weapon systems on the garde status tiles up on the main screen went from a bright green to an angry blaring red. She hoped James was praying to that God he talked about.

"Break ring in one mike." Samari called out. Heartbeat monitors on the status tiles began to speed up.

"Thirty seconds." Yuhata could feel the tension on the bridge.

"Ten seconds." James breathing was conspicuous in its long, measured rate.

"They're all Benisuzumes!" Came the cry over the comms.

"Break ring!" Everything happened at once.

* * *

Samari was bucked about inside her cockpit as she jinked out of the palm formation, narrowly avoiding one of the garde-shaped gauna as the two formations collided. Her head was spinning as she tried to get a handle on the situation.

"I can't shake her!"

"Take her out!"

"True body revealed!"

"I got her!"

Samari turned off the universal comms and switched to a squad circuit.

"First Squad, form up on me. Marking target. Execute pincer on my mark!" Samari hoped she could salvage the situation.

* * *

Yuhata found herself gripping the thin railing of her platform. Already ten faces on red tiles with flatline vitals stared accusingly out from the main display. She wanted to close her eyes, to run away. The shouts and screams came over the universal circuit to the bridge, filling the usually quiet and cool room with the sounds of chaos.

"Status." The single word came out remarkably calm even while her knuckles turned white.

"Third, Fifth, and Seventh Squad: fifty percent casualties. Second, Fourth, Tenth, and Eleventh squad: twenty five percent casualties. Twelfth Squad: nineteen kills. First Squad: Eleven kills. Second through Eleventh squads: Five kills. Enemy casualties: Seventy three percent." Yuhata blinked. Three quarters of the gauna destroyed in the first encounter. She would have marveled if she wasn't so focused on the job at hand.

"Third and Seventh Squad, withdraw. Ninth squad, retrieve Seventh's Kabizashi. Twelfth squad, support Sixth squad." The answers rolled out before she even knew she had made a decision. Her upper thinking hazed slightly as she snapped out at the speed of thought.

"GA-490 confirmed and approaching Sixth squad!" One of the watchstanders called out. Yuhata's eyes snapped to that corner of the chaos and cursed. Neither Tanikaze's Twelfth squad nor Samari's First Squad was in range to help. She didn't like their chances against the original Benisuzume.

"Hoshijiro, one unit down." The giggling voice of that psychotic bitch reverberated in the bridge.

"Unit 210 is down! She's going after 211!" Unit 213's tile highlighted as he spoke. Yuhata started to grip the railing so hard her hand went all the way around and her nails began digging into her palm.

"This is Hoshijiro, another unit down." Yuhata didn't notice the thin trickle of blood dripping off her knuckles.

"This is Seii, we are moving to assist Sixth squad. Tanikaze has left the comms circuit and isn't answering." Yuhata looked up.

"Bring up Tanikaze's head cam." One of the watchstanders taped away at her console before the camera footage from Unit 704 came up on the main display. He just seemed to be following her as she weaved madly about in the vacuum. Yuhata would have bet that he was trying to talk to her.

"I'm taking the shot!" Seii called out. Yuhata couldn't tell what happened by the chaotically reeling footage from Tanikaze's head cam or the sensors, only that GA-490 disengaged and began moving back to the Ocarina. Yuhata let out a breath.

The remaining gauna were slippery bastards. It took another thirty minutes pop the last of them. Yuhata was almost ready to smile and call the remaining members of the sortie back to Sidonia when she heard James mumble something.

"What was that?" She asked quizzically. She had been ignoring the uncomfortable fidgeting he had been doing since the combat started, but this was the first time he had said something out loud.

"Trojan Horse." He said. He sounded worried but before she could ask him to elaborate he started to shout at the display. "Leia! Activate protocol Avatar! Authorization Papa-Tango-Romeo! Target Unit 087!"

"Authorization confirmed, launching protocol." The ever-calm feminine voice of James' garde reverberated through the bridge as the head cams from the thirty-seventh defense squad popped up.

"Izana." Yuhata whispered, as the header Unit 723 boldly proclaimed her to be a part of that squad. She only caught a glimpse of the placenta-oozing hulk that had been Unit 087 before the heavy higgs particle canons the defense squad mounted turned the screen into a blue inferno. Yuhata hesitated a moment as Unit 087 on the main display became GA-490.

"All defense squads, move on GA-490." The captain said in as calm a voice as ever. How could she stay so calm when four teenagers, one of them Yuhata's best friend, had been seconds from death?

The screen continued to show a blue hellfire as the thirty-seventh pushed their canons to the melting point. As their firing systems began to overheat and fail the slack was picked up by rapidly arriving reinforcements from the rest of the combat patrol around Sidonia.

"GA-490 is moving toward the natural mineral deposits!" A watchstander called out. She was going to enter the mining tunnels riddling 579 Sidonia, the dwarf planet that was the center of Sidonia's construction and which she still carried around the aft section of the outer hull.

"Leia, disengage protocol." Yuhata heard James say under his breath.

"This is Twelfth Squad, last of the Gauna destroyed!" Tanikaze called in over the universal circuit.

"Good, return to the Sidonia and assist in the hunt for GA-490." Yuhata said.

"No." The captain said over her, cutting off the end of Yuhata's orders. "Tanikaze, your behavior towards the Benisuzume is troubling, assist Ninth squad in retrieval of the Kabizashi."

"Roger Captain." Tanikaze didn't sound pleased.

"It's a fake!" The tiles of the defense squads battling inside 579 Sidonia enlarged as the exclamation came over the comms.

"This one's a fake too!"

"The real one's got to be around here somewhere!" Yuhata's nails went back to digging into her palms as the only thing they found inside 579 were placental clones.

"Placental erosion on Unit 723!" Yuhata's head whipped around on another watchstander. "Higgs reservoir damage! 723 eject! Eject!" The only sounds coming back were Izana's weak squeaks as her garde was ripped apart around her, she had frozen up as the Benisuzume had materialized in front of her, breaking into her garde from all angles with placenta.

The next thing that the sensors showed was Unit 704, Tanikaze, grappling with GA-490, dragging it away from Izana's garde with the sheer momentum of its passing before the Benisuzume began to accelerate away from Sidonia, back towards the Ocarina.

"Light damage to Unit 704, GA-490 is disengaging." Came the report.

"Pursue it!" Yuhata said.

"No." The captain said, again over the end and in contradiction of Yuhata's orders. "Mission complete, all units, return to Sidonia."

* * *

After the battle Yuhata walked out into corridor leading onto the bridge and leaned up against the wall, slowly sliding down it and sitting on the floor. Everything started to shake. Her heartrate was through the roof and she was gasping for air. She could feel sweat pour down her face despite the frigid temperature of the bridge. Tears from pure tension boiled up in her eyes.

She heard footsteps from the bridge and quickly stood up, trying to push everything back down. She still had a job to do. James came out into the hallway and smiled at her.

"Don't worry, you don't have to keep it up for me." She tried to keep her face up, but she wasn't too good with people to begin with and James was almost as good as Nagate at disarming her. Everything came out again and she slid down the wall.

"I-I just…." She couldn't really come up with any words to describe anything at all, much less her own emotions. This happened every time. All the tension and stress from the battle built up inside her until it felt like she was going to burst. She was surprised when pulled her up off the ground and gave her a hug. It wasn't very long or compassionate, but it was decidedly warm.

"It's ok. Izana, Nagate, Samari, Seii, they all got out alive." He held her out at arm's length by the shoulders and gave her another disarming smile, "I think Izana had to go to med bay, she'd probably appreciate some company." Yuhata nodded and they started off towards the med bay.

* * *

**Ok, chapter 8, hope you like it. Also could I get some feedback on the action/tension scenes? I've been going for a more dialogue-heavy/implied-action light novel style instead of a heavy-description/implicit-action full novel style, how's that working? I'll explain the Avatar protocol later, not terribly important. **


	9. Grounded

Yankee Knights

Chapter 9

Grounded

* * *

Samari awoke two minutes before her alarm went off. She went ahead and turned it off before throwing off the blankets. James had lent her one of his survival blankets since the ambient heat generators had been turned off and the heating pipes in the walls were still being repaired and brought up to speed after a century of inactivity. She had taken to wearing a night shirt after a number of midnight snack trips had turned into scandalous escapades, none of which ended well for James. She yawned and made her bunk before moving to the shower off the main room.

She sighed and blew a stray wisp of hair out of her face. The cot James was sleeping on until his request for new quarters went through was empty. Again. She didn't really understand why she was so frustrated. They had been trying to get him his own place for weeks, what did she care if he was never around? She knew he had slept there, the note on the table was a new one, but for the life of her she didn't know where he went off to.

* * *

"What are you doing here, Suchuāto?" Tanikaze blurted out as he and Yuhata entered the massive drydocks of Tohei Heavy Industries. James and Sasaki had been hunched over a console not far from the door.

"He's helping me bring Sidonia's technology up to date. The question is, what is a lowly garde pilot doing in my restricted docks?" Sasaki replied, classically confrontational, more than ready to throw the interloper in question out by her own physical force.

"He's with me." Yuhata replied, equally confrontational in defense of Tanikaze. "We're here to learn about the new artificial kabi weapons."

"Ah. The boss told me you'd be coming. She didn't mention anything about company though." she said with decidedly negative look at Tanikaze. She dropped the subject, turning around and James let out a sigh of relief. "Follow me."

She led them off the platform they came in on and across the cavernous dry docks. Not a single one was left vacant.

"Wh-what is that?" Tanikaze asked as they passed the first bay.

"A gardes back unit."

"It's huge! Is it for long range navigation?"

"No, it's a design based off 917's. It incorporates the antimatter higgs generator and the Fleet's Warczeski-style compensator. We just wanted to make sure we could actually build the thing. The next step is compressing it into a manageable size." Sasaki's voice sounded flat, as if explaining a simple concept to a dunce student, but a small smile betrayed her preening. They passed several more bays with massive experiments that neither Yuhata nor Nagate could make heads or tails of before Sasaki and James stopped.

"It looks like a mixture between the high speed bullet accelerator from the old simulator and James' mass accelerator cannon." Tanikaze said as he took in the 50 meter long weapon, essential a long tube.

"Well, yes, but closer to the MAC than the HSBA, not even going into how you know about that. Its propellant is entirely magnetic force provided by electro-magnets coiled in the barrel acting against an iron-coated artificial kabi, or a ferrous coated penetration round (FCPR). It will also be able to fire high explosive, incendiary, and electro-magnetic pulse rounds. The HSBA design used more inefficient rails mixed with a chemical propellant, producing a higher recoil and giving away your position through light emissions." Sasaki explained.

"You'll get to test it tomorrow Tanikaze." James finished.

* * *

"Well that was a cluster fuck." Samari said as she slid down against the back wall of the ready room. It was packed with cheering pilots. She guessed she knew where James had been heading off to now. Three rounds at 200 kilometers. It only took a split second. At nearly seventy-three percent of light speed, they had impacted almost simultaneously, disintegrating the placenta and true body alike. The pacifist vanguard had been defended, but only by revealing this new capability to the Ocarina and the mass union ship in the Lem system. She guessed she knew where James had been all this time.

* * *

"107 true bodies just peeled off from the Ocarina!" One of the watchstander called out. Yuhata had been spending the watch on the bridge as per James' advice to get to know the feel of the bridge and the bridge crew.

"Get me Sasaki." Yuhata said, she'd been getting better at keeping herself calm under duress. Thinking that guys like Tanikaze and James stood behind her 100% helped. Her panel beeped.

"Tohei." Sasaki came over, curtly.

"Sasaki, how many gardes are equipped with MACs and FCPRs?"

"Twelve."

"Transfer them to the sortie hangar."

"Aye-aye." The channel cut. It seemed that some of James mannerisms were spreading.

"I want twenty-four gardes flying support. Give Samari, Seii, and Tanikaze a MAC-equipped squad each, four per squad."

"Rodger that, sending the muster orders." Came the call from the Flight Operations officer, affectionately called Ops. Two hours later the last gauna had been killed. No casualties.

* * *

The general quarter's klaxon got into James' head as he ran onto the bridge. He'd barely gotten any sleep in days, and the only time he'd seen Samari since he'd started helping at Tohei she had ignored him. It wasn't his responsibility to be at her beck and call all the time, but he still felt like a lead ball was nesting in his stomach.

If he had accomplished anything since Leia had been grounded it had been instilling confidence in Yuhata. She seemed to come to him for advice more and more often on everything from being a commanding officer to helping her win over Nagate. He couldn't really help with the latter, but being someone she could open up to had obviously helped her overall issues. She wasn't even sweating as he sat in the observation chair, despite an asteroid nearly as big as 579 Sidonia itself driven by more than three hundred gauna towards the seed ship. Ninety-five Mk. 18 gardes plus the Tsugumori had already been launched, all of them equipped with the new mass accelerator cannons. Samari's voice was already coming over the bridge comms.

"Clasp formation successful, proceeding to zero-zero intercept with target in two-seven mikes." Her voice was as calm as it ever was.

"Rodger that, Samari." Yuhata replied, before tapping on her console. "This is Sidonia to all gardes, we have an intelligence update. We have confirmed the presence of three-hundred and twelve gauna true bodies. 50 of these are clustered in a crater on the back end of the asteroid. They appeared to be linked and maneuvering the asteroid. These are your primary target. Six hours from now the asteroid will cross the line of no return, after which the debris shower of even the destroyed asteroid will destroy Sidonia. You have until then to eliminate the gauna propelling the asteroid. Once you have done that we will launch a planetary bombardment missile. Good hunting."

"Rodger." Came the call from all 96 gardes.

9,000 Kilometers.

The distance display started to turn down as the gardes accelerated.

7,000 Kilometers.

The quiet whine of the environmental units on the bridge seemed deafening in the deathly silence.

5,000 Kilometers.

"Pivot formation 1-8-0 degrees!" Samari called, beginning deceleration to meet the enemy.

3,000 Kilometers.

Icons went from green to a burning, angry red as weapon's safeties were released.

1,000 Kilometers.

"Entering attack range." Came the call from Ops.

500 Kilometers.

"Break clasp, all units group by squad and begin long-range attack!" Samari's voice dropped as the adrenaline hit her system. The displays on the bridge disintegrated as the gardes broke the clasp and scattered over a huge sphere of space. Trajectory lines from the MACs multiplied as Sidonia's new weapons filled the space before the gauna with hordes of artificial kabi flying at cee-fractional speeds.

"Hit! Hit!"

"Gauna counter-sortie taking casualties! Thirteen, sixteen, eighteen!" Ops paused for a second, "They're turning around! Gauna sortie is retreating toward the asteroid!"

"Retreating?" Yuhata mumbled to herself. "They've never retreated so early before, I wonder if the mass accelerators were too much for them."

"No." Was all James had time to say.

"Accuracy declining!" Came the call from Ops, "Garde Sortie entering asteroid's gravitational sphere!"

"It's a trap." James finished under his breath.

"Cease fire! Pursue into the gravity field!" Yuhata plowed over him.

"This is Zero-Zero-Five, taking first platoon into equatorial orbit!" Samari called out.

"This is Zero-One-Nine, taking second platoon into polar orbit!"

"This is Five-Six-One, I can't maintain stability!"

"Your gun's still deployed, drop it!"

"This is Three-One-Two, I missed the orbit!"

"Aghhh!..."

"Unit 561 has impacted the asteroid, unit destroyed." Came Ops.

"First Platoon, there's an ambush ahead!" Came the call from Navigation, who handled the sensors during battle.

"Unit Two-Two-Nine destroyed!"

"Higgs cannon fire coming from the surface! All units, scatter!" A small detached part of James brain noticed that Samari's voice dropped an octave in combat, the rest of him just tried to lie still and look calm.

"This is unit Three-One-Four, I over shot the orbit!"

"Unit 831 destroyed!"

"I'm hit, can't see!"

"Unit 546 is going down!"

"Shit!"

"Samari, this looks bad, we're surrounded." Seii's voice was cool and constant, even in the thick of the action.

"This is second platoon, we've reached the crater, opening fire on the linked gauna!" All eyes turned to the other corner of the display as the sensors ran the placental erosion. 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 90% erosion.

"We're out of ammo!" A single damming phrase.

"One true body has emerged from the link!" Came Navs.

"This is 019, a gauna is coming out!" Yuhata tapped a few controls to bring up the flight cam from 019.

"702, B-Benisuzume." She breathed, a split second before the line went to static.

"Second platoon! Second platoon respond!"

"Signal loss from second platoon." Ops gulped. "Presumed dead, ma'am." 48 pilot's tiles turned an accusatory red, an X hiding their faces.

"Dead…" The words reverberated in her suddenly vacant mind like a bug inside a drum. The only thing she could hear all of a sudden was her own heartbeat and the blood rushing in her ears. She probably would have heard her knees rattling together too if she wasn't in that stance James taught her.

"It's ok." James voice was low and quiet, only Yuhata could really hear it. "First platoon's still there. They're depending on you, Yuhata. We all are." She looked down. He seemed so calm and composed in the observer's seat, she couldn't believe it. How could he say it's ok?! Nearly seventy pilots had died already! She told herself that, but her legs had stopped shaking.

"First platoon, regroup! Push towards the crater and conserve your MAC ammunition. Defense teams, link up and move toward the asteroid, stay just outside of Higgs beam range. Guns?"

"Yes, ma'am?" The deck officer in charge of Sidonia's on-board weaponry asked.

"Put a spread on that asteroid from the port gauss cannons. Make 'em sweat, buy us some time."

"Yes, ma'am!" She replied with a predatory growl. She barely ever got to use her toys.

"These gauna are using us for shooting practice!" Tsuruuchi came in over the comms.

"Cut the chatter!"

"He's right, Samari." It was Seii again, "We need to fly lower so they can't get a shot."

A moment's hesitation.

"We're breaking out, follow me!" Seii said as he dove toward the surface. The rest of first platoon followed.

"I can't hold her steady at this altitude!"

"Aggghhhh!..."

"Unit 370 destroyed!"

"We've made it through!" A collective breath on the bridge let out all at once.

"Don't loosen up!" Yuhata said, leaning on her panel, "Enemy higgs batteries ahead! We've identified a loose network of gorges along the asteroid's surface where you can avoid the majority of them. Your platoon has been split between Samari, Seii, and Tanikaze, each of you take your squad along a different route, hit that thrust source!"

"Rodger!" came the reply as they split up once again. Sidonia rumbled as the first salvo from her gauss cannons shot out against the asteroid, still too far to ensure a hit, but the asteroid maneuvering to avoid them would buy Sidonia precious seconds.

"We can't maneuver in there!"

"This is Seven-Zero-Four, taking route C!"

"This is Seii Squad, we're being pursued into the canyon, they're catching up!"

"Unit Nine-One-One destroyed!"

"They caught up to us!"

"Seven-Zero-Nine, My back unit has been severely damaged, ejecting!"

"Gauna have opened fire!"

"They look like our prototype atmospheric-gardes." Yuhata thought out loud.

"Unit 704 has destroyed one of the pursuing gauna."

"Close range counter attack by the second gauna, it's grabbed ahold of him!"

"Massive damage to head and torso on 704!"

"Foaming confirmed, gauna down."

"Pilot is unconscious!"

"Unit 723 is attempting to retrieve!"

"Izana, you can't maintain that load, don't try it!" Yuhata blurted out amidst the bridge crews' reports

"Unit 704 and Unit 723 have collided with the asteroid, no signal." The report seemed almost somber.

"They're being surrounded!"

"Prepare missile launch." The captain said. Yuhata had forgotten she was there.

"Aye, aye." Yuhata said, "Guns, make it so, Navs, warn the civilian areas of impending emergency maneuvers."

"Rodger." The two watchstanders replied simultaneously. Yuhata's voice was death. The klaxon sounded again. Gauna signatures continued to swarm the crash site. The gauna closest to the two crashed gardes winked out of existence on the display.

"Gauna foaming confirmed?!"

"The remnants of Tanikaze squads have taken up position three kilometers north of the crash site and have opened fire." Navs replied, sifting through the mountains of sensor data in moments.

"Retrieving Pilot Shinatose!" One of the rescuing gardes called out has it landed next to Unit 723, physically ripping off the cockpit and carefully placing the pilot in the Mk. 18's small cargo bay.

"Don't remove Tanikaze from the Tsugumori, treat him there." The captain ordered to the unit standing over the ancient Mk. 17.

"Rodger that." A few moments passed, then Tanikaze's tile turned from yellow back to blue.

"This is Samari Squad, have rendezvoused with Seii Squad, currently pushing towards the crater." Samari came over the comms.

"Tanikaze Squad, you are clear of hostiles." Ops stated.

"Rodger that Sidonia, we're splitting up. Tsugumori will proceed toward the crater, all other unites are falling back." Yuhata began to reply about the total asinine stupidity of that plan, but the captain beat her to the punch.

"Proceed."

"Samari and Seii squads have encountered a Higgs particle trap! Six more units down!"

"Benisuzume identified, in pursuit of Seii and Samari squads!"

"All units, take evasive action!"

"Samari!"

James heart jumped into his throat as Samari's tile turned from a brilliant blue to sickly yellow.

"Unit 005 damaged! Pilot vitals are shaky!"

"This is 704, engaging Benisuzume, I'll hold her off!"

"But you alone-"

"Do it." The captain said. Her voice was ice and brokered no argument.

"Roger." The icons representing the Tsugumori and the Benisuzume began to buzz around each other, farther and farther from the asteroid, as Seii and Samari squads rocketed off down the canyon.

"Twenty Five minutes left until deadline!"

"Guns, buy us more time!"

"It's accelerating!"

"Update, seventeen minutes!"

"Guns!"

"On it!"

Sidonia shook once more

"Samari and Seii Squads, prepare to meet last gauna defensive lines!"

"Direct hit on Benisuzume, incomplete foaming, true body still intact!"

"Seii squad is down to only one garde!"

"This is Seven-Zero-Four, I'm out of ammo, pulling out."

"Samari squad has broken through to the crater!"

"Fire!" Samari's commlink called out a split second before the linked gauna disintegrated from multiple direct hits.

"Asteroid acceleration is now at zero gee's!"

"30 seconds to planet buster impact!"

The asteroids destruction was visible from Sidonia itself, the debris cloud expanding too quickly to cause any damage to the thickly armored seed ship. The watch standers all started to cheer, standing up and celebrating. What was left of the strike force fell back and rendezvoused with the remnants of Tanikaze squad and clasped up to come home, several without any power at all and being dragged by their fellows.

Yuhata stood down from her platform and walked slowly out the door. She made it all the way to the end of the hallway, out to one of the large open spaces honeycombing the inside of the Sidonia before kneeling over and throwing up over the side. Eighty-Six men and women, many of them her friends, dead by her orders, by her hand. In seven hours eighty-six fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters had been wiped from the face of the universe. She couldn't tell the sobs from the convulsions by the time she felt a hand on her back.

She turned around, wiping her mouth on her coat sleeve. James was standing there with a sadly compassionate smile when it hit her. He had lost everything. The ancient patches on his black flight suit, he would likely never see their kind again. He knew more about loss than nearly anyone on the Sidonia and yet he knelt there next to her, not asking anything. She reached out and grabbed the one on his right breast pocket, a greyscale image of a man in archaic steel armor, his shield the ancient stars and stripes. She grabbed it and pulled him to her, crying into him for what seemed like forever.

"Yuhata." She heard dully.

"Yuhata." Someone was whispering her name. Her eyes opened, crusty. She must have passed out at some point. She glanced around in some confusion, she seemed to be in one of the old crew lounges not far from the bridge, mostly unused now. James had a hand on her shoulder and was gently shaking her.

"Yuhata, the gardes are about to get back, we should go down to the bay." He said softly.

"Huh? Yea." She replied, still a little drowsy.

* * *

Samari could feel the cold sweat inside her flight suit as her garde disappeared into the darkness of the sortie bay, dimly lit only by a few running lights. Her breathing was still erratic and her hands would shake like crazy if she took them off the controls. It was the closest she had every truly come to death. Her garde severely damaged, eighty-six of her squadmates killed, victory attained by a breath of luck as thin as a piano wire. It had been nearly four hours back to the Sidonia towing the damaged gardes, like her own, and yet the adrenaline still surged, although this time there was nowhere to go. Tsuruuchi, Seii, and Tanikaze had all made it back safely, and James had been safely back on Sidonia, but the imminent danger they had all been in had shaken her to the bone. Her seeming incapability to protect them with the odds stacked against her. She would never have admitted it, but at the end, in the crater, on the cusp of victory or death, the only thing she had thought of was James. His dumb, naive smile.

Her garde lurched as it docked in the bay. The lights of the bay nearly blinded her as her cockpit opened, the bustling activity of the mechanics seemed almost surreal. She took off her helmet and breathed deeply. The air wasn't exactly fresh, but it didn't stink of burning circuit boards and human nervousness. She moved from the cockpit to the elevator carefully, her hands and now her knees still shaking, though thankfully hidden by the slightly baggier flight suit. She gripped the rail tightly as the elevator thumped against the main walkway.

She stepped out, her mag-boots thumping on the walkway when she saw him. James was standing with a few of the other pilots, his black flight suit conscious against the white of Sidonia pilots. Nagate was there as well, they all seemed to be standing in front of the battered hulk that used to be the Tsugumori. Shinatose was there also, along with two of the Honoka sisters, Ren and Hou if she didn't miss her guess… and the vice commander.

Something about Vice-Commander Midorikawa set Samari on edge, like a cat whose den had been defiled. She was red-eyed and had just finished hugging Izana, stressing even her artificial arm, but when she stopped she stood a tad closer to James, there arms almost touching, as if she needed a reminder that he was still there.

How dare she?! The thought went through Samari's mind so fast, she could barely make sense of it. How dare she what? Get close to James? Frontwards or backwards, why should that matter to her? Thinking about it directly only increased the feeling, growing a pit of lead at the base of her stomach. As if on que, James noticed her standing there.

"Samari!" He said, that big, dumb, stupid, idiot smile on his face. Samari stalked past him as if he hadn't said anything, as if he wasn't there at all.

"Samari?" He called after her as she disappeared through the airlock, small tears in her eyes and a stubborn refusal to face the reason for them.

* * *

**Wow, so far so good!**

**Love to hear from you guys, good and bad**

**Fleet will be appearing next chapter or chapter after that, so stay tuned!**

**Also super sorry for the erratic upload schedule**

***MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MAIN SHOW BELOW***

**Yuhata will NOT become a man. Period. When you have a crush on a character and she turns into a man, just, no.**


	10. Pilots and People

Yankee Knights

Chapter 10

Pilots and People

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The silence of space could be deafening at times. All James could hear was his own heavy breathing inside his bulbous pilot's helmet. The flashes of light and the chaotic scene around him seemed oddly detached in that silence. The thought touched lightly on the top of his head before his heavy mag boots thumped back into the dust, his muscles struggling in vain to move fluidly inside his bulky black flight suit.

The minute he touched back on the asteroid's surface, the sounds came back, muffled but no less recognizable. Explosions, gunfire, and the insane shrieks of the Gauna's placental clones loping unnaturally towards the Marine's positions. The signature red streaks of the clones' miniature Higgs beams and the tracers from the Marine's small arms and heavy guns lashed out around him as James fired several rounds out of his sidearm. The heavy bullets tore through several placental clones and threw him another few yards back. The chaos around him turned to silence once more.

He couldn't remember why he was on the asteroid, or how he came to be chased by a veritable army of hideous caricatures of human beings as he moon jumped towards a group of Fleet Marines filling the vacuum around him with flying bits of led and the occasional bolt of ionized gases. Before he knew it James had landed again and the air in his helmet was once more filled with the sounds of hell itself. He fired another round off, but no matter how many clones he or the Marines behind him killed, there were always more. Always more shrieks. Always more death.

James landed again and was immediately thrown to his back, landing heavily and sending up a small cloud of dust. He couldn't feel anything, but he could see the thin trail of smoke from his chest, smell the burnt flesh cauterized by the Higgs wound in his chest. That much radiation should have immediately fried his heart, but he could still hear the blood pumping in his ears as a grotesque, humanoid lump of placenta jumped on top of him. He knew that it had pinned his arms to the ground with the hardened blades it had for arms, but he still couldn't feel a thing. It gave off a shriek before lifting one of its bladed appendages from his body, dripping with blood, and jabbed forward at the visor of his helmet.

* * *

James jerked back so suddenly that his rolling chair fell backwards, his head hitting the steel deck so hard he started to see stars. He felt that. James winced against the harsh luminescent lighting in his small Toha Heavy Industries office as he started to take in reality. He hadn't slept since the battle with the asteroid sortie more than thirty six hours before. At least it had been thirty six hours the last time he checked, he must have dosed off at his terminal working on trying to bridge the gap between Sidonia's tech and the Fleet's. A shadow passed in front of the light and he thought he heard a voice through the ringing in his ears. He must have hit his head harder than he thought.

"James, James are you ok?!" Yuhata seemed to yell at him. She was only a few feet away, she didn't need to do that. The thought came to James slowly through a fog, and all he could do was stare at her as he tried to process everything.

"Oh, shit, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to startle you like that. Here, let me help you up." She was still louder than normal, but since his muscles had suddenly decided to stop working, he decided to forgive her that small transgression for helping him up.

"Oh, shit." She repeated. It was an effort to turn his head to look at what she was staring at. It was another solid effort to blink at the small pool of blood on the floor and force his mind to figure out what that might mean.

"You're probably concussed." Yuhata continued, kindly providing an answer for him, allowing his sleep, and now concussion, addled mind to rest for a moment. "Let's get you to the infirmary, I think the closest one is in Pilot Country."

He still wasn't processing right, but she sounded reasonable enough, so he gave a drunken nod as she tried to pull him up. Yuhata grunted, being a little over half his size at fifty or so kilos, as she got her arm around his back and pushed him into an upright position; helping him coax his legs into standing. He noticed she was wearing her pitch black Sidonian dress uniform.

"The ceremony." Was all he said as he tried to push away from her when he finally got to standing. He didn't have any dress uniforms with him, no one had thought they would be useful in the emergency kit, but he did have a spare flight suit he kept well enough pressed for occasions such as the mass funerals which were unfortunately common after Sidonian combat operations. The whole standing thing didn't go so well and he nearly fell to his knees.

"Whoa there" Yuhata said as she grabbed him. He wasn't good at noticing those kinds of things even when his brain was working at full capacity, but even he could see the look of worry on her face. "The ceremony ended half an hour ago. You didn't show up, that's why I came looking for you." She blushed a little at that, but James had already met his quota of social insights for the day.

He started to come around to his senses and started kicking himself mentally for missing the ceremony. How could he have missed the funeral of eighty-seven pilots?! How selfish had he been to sleep through it and deny those men and women the massive respect they deserved?! He pushed away from Yuhata again, still wobbly but stable enough to stand on his own and picked up his chair; sitting in it with a heavy heart and weak legs. He glanced at his desk, strewn as it was with designs and concepts; some of them his own, some of them Sasaki's that he was double checking and making suggestions for. He had prioritized the haphazard stacks of datapads and old fashioned papers over the deaths of living, breathing human beings, and he was hating himself pretty hard for it.

"Nobody blames you for not coming." Yuhata said comfortingly, as if she had read his mind, "Everybody pretty much knows by now you and Sasaki are down here working to make sure that doesn't happen again." He continued to look down at the desk in a fairly obvious cloud of self-loathing. Yuhata gave a consternated look and bent down in front of him, "If it hadn't been for the MAC guns YOU built, every single person on that sortie would be dead."

He twitched at that as if to argue, but his brain was still addled, and he couldn't really think of a retort anyway. Realizing his self-pity only made his self-loathing worse. She pressed on.

"Nagate, Izana, Seii, the Honoka sisters, and Samari would all be dead right now, not to mention me."

He looked up at that.

"Come on," She continued, putting an arm around him in emotional comfort and physical support, "let's get you to the infirmary."

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**OK, so reasons for the short chapter-**

**I've been accepted into Norwich University and NROTC – Marine Option, My time is mostly filled up with looking for a job, studying for placement exams, taking said placement exams, paperwork, etc., etc. (Not to mention PT) I need to make somewhere in the vicinity of two grand before August in order to pay for uniforms and books, so becoming a real Marine takes priority over writing stories about Marines, sorry (no sarcasm, really love writing this, but priorities) **

**I also want to make my chapters longer and more professional in the ~5k word range, so multiple uploads will increase the frequency of updates instead of going months without**

**It also allows for you guys to make suggestions mid-chapter on character events and the like, I really like hearing your thoughts on everything, PM is probably the best way to get a hold of me. If you want to post you're email you'll have to disguise it to get it past the censors, even in PM**

**Sorry for any inconveniences - Projective**


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